https://ift.tt/3dmTzTU This article covers my one year of experience at Slalom as an Associate Consultant in the Data & Analytics pract...
This article covers my one year of experience at Slalom as an Associate Consultant in the Data & Analytics practice.
This article covers my experience at Slalom as an Associate Consultant in the Data & Analytics practice. Previously, I worked in an R&D company as an in-house Data Scientist. These experiences are unique to me in their own ways, but I will focus on my current job in this article. While in grad school, I always wondered what it is like to be a consultant in the data field and what unique skill sets are highly valued in consulting. If you have the same curiosity, stick with me for some time, and I will try to draw a better picture.
Table of contents:
- Company-Client Dynamics
1.1 Communication and Idea Pitching - Learning Opportunity
2.1 Multiple Hats
2.2 Breadth and Depth of Knowledge - Client-Facing and Customer-Centric
3.1 Adaptability and Flexibility
3.2 Diverse Team - Personal Benefits
4.1 Powerful Networking Abilities
4.2 Career Flexibility and Growth
4.3 Internal Opportunities - Challenges
5.1 Time Management & Work Pressure
5.2 Challenging Client Environments
5.3 Others
1. Company — Client Dynamics
Communication and Idea Pitching
Excellent communication skills are vital to being a successful consultant. Often clients are spread throughout the country, and they come from various industries like Automotive, Financial Services, Healthcare, Life sciences, etc. Every client has a unique set of core values and principles. As a consultant, Understanding the background and knowledge of the audience (clients) will help in effective communication.
For example, A pharma/ life science client may not be aware of the complexity of a cloud migration problem. The consultant should decompose the problem with alternate solutions as the client often may not agree with one option, or the solution may not fit into their existing architecture. Furthermore, Consultants should be able to pitch their ideas to the client by customizing their solutions, to the client's existing architecture and business model by keeping the client’s budget, scope, and efforts into consideration.
While working on a client project, We often discover a whole new problem which can be a potential new project, you can pitch this idea to your senior team and come with a plan to tackle the new problem as it opens up more revenue and deepens the engagement.
2. Learning Opportunity
2.1 Multiple Hats
Data scientists/engineers often wear multiple hats as the data process/ pipeline is vast and often open-ended. Data Analysts, Engineers, Administrators, Scientists, Architectures, ML Engineers, etc., are a few roles in the field of data. Often, duties are mixed up and interchanged depending on the nature of the business and the company's size.
The word “consultant” comes from the verb “to consult,” which is to seek information or advice from a professional or an expert in the field. According to the definition, A consultant is an expert in a specific industry who offers advice, recommendations, and suggestions as to what the right course of action in a particularly problematic situation you should take.
Consultants often play the role of a mentor, enabler, supervisor, and support engineer. Understanding the project management aspects and client engagement aspects is a plus. Consultants are usually preferred when the business needs a quick and scalable solution so, wearing these multiple hats becomes essential to help the clients better.
2.2 Breadth and Depth of Knowledge
Having a breadth and depth of knowledge will make you a better problem solver. Let's consider a case where your team builds an E2E data solution, and you are a Data Scientist responsible for building a predictive model in Amazon Sagemaker. As you are working closely with the data migration team, ETL and Snowflake developer, and viz expert, you need to understand the general flow and technicalities of the solutions while being an expert at data science of things. In short, It is preferred to be a generalist and a specialist. In contrast, an In-house Data person may or may not be expected to be a generalist depending on the business and size of the data team. Refer to https://powerful-problem-solving.com/about/ for more details.
It’s fast-paced learning and development, If you want to experience a multitude of platforms and technology in a short time then consulting is a way to go. But is it always good to be in a fast-paced environment? We will come to this in section 5. Stay tuned!
3. Client-Facing and Customer-Centric
Keeping the ‘data’ aside, As a consultant, we want to solve every day to consistently provide great experiences for our clients. The customer experience, everything from sales to marketing to support, is built around the needs of our clients. This mindset is appreciated in consulting world.
3.1 Adaptability and Flexibility
According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, “ The probability that the market share leader is also the profitability leader declined from 34% in 1950 to just 7% in 2007. And it has become virtually impossible for some executives even to identify in what industry and with which companies they're competing.
All this uncertainty poses a tremendous challenge for strategy making. That's because traditional approaches to strategy — though often seen as the answer to change and uncertainty — assume a relatively stable and predictable world”
As consultants, we should understand and accept uncertainties in client requirements or project (internal or external) timelines and often wear multiple hats by adapting quickly to new challenges. It is challenging when the requirements change, but that is inevitable in some cases, and we should be able to customize our solution as the business requirements change. Challenge yourself to:
- Identify and address the uncertainties.
- Put an initiative on every risk.
- Examine multiple alternatives.
- Increase the clock speed of adaption.
For more details on adaptability, refer to: https://hbr.org/2011/07/adaptability-the-new-competitive-advantage
3.2 Diverse Team
If you think closely, We are not working for the client; we are working with them by enabling them.
Generally, The project team comprises a few consultants (like engineers, arch, and viz), a project manager (either from the client-side or consulting firm side), and a point of contact/ solution owner from the client.
To build excellent solutions, one should work closely with the client by following agile and getting feedbacks often for constant improvements by understanding the differences in core values, style of work, pace, and expectations.
4. Personal Benefits
4.1 Powerful Networking Abilities
After a year in consulting business, I feel a significant improvement in my networking abilities. As it's a client-facing job and we speak to clients from different industries and mindsets regularly, This aspect has helped improve networking skills.
Active listening is the way to go
The aspects in consulting which will improve the networking skills are;
- Interact face-to-face daily with diverse clients
- Actively listening and understanding the client requirements
- Ability to ask the right questions by understanding their concerns
- Idea pitching and providing multiple options by understanding the client's business model
- Public speaking, presentation, and interpersonal skills
4.2 Career Flexibility and Growth
In section 2.2, We spoke about the depth and width of knowledge. Being a generalist is good, and I think inevitable in consulting business. But, YOU have the complete freedom to choose your specialization, and you can move around and build any specialization of your interest, and the firm will fully support you with all the materials, tools, and internal PoCs; I love that flexibility!
Initially, I wanted to grow my expertise in Data Science. Still, we had a lot of opportunities in the Data Engineering field, so I started building my expertise in that which I started enjoying. Consulting firms encourage new learnings and certifications. We have partnered with significant techs for better materials, coaching, and certification. The firms conduct coaching and training programs for the consultants to keep up with fast-paced tech and new advanced clients.
4.3 Internal Opportunities
Internally, You have the flexibility and freedom to conduct courses, coach juniors, and conduct workshops. This will allow you to understand your market and different practices in the market.
5. Challenges
Like any other job, Consulting has a few challenges and disadvantages.
5.1 Time Management & Work Pressure
Consultants are often under pressure. They must meet certain metrics, do so by specific deadlines, and still be able to build up the experience of an executive team at the same time.
Once you get started, you'll find that there is always something else you could be doing in your career. It's tricky to balance this pressure.
5.2 Challenging Client Environments
Some clients will give a hard time as you work for them, and as the business is contract-based, it gets difficult to get out in the middle of the project. Challenging client environments include;
- The client keeps adding small things to your list and is inconsiderate about the deadline and working hours.
- Some clients might make you feel unsafe after missing a deadline.
- After a few weeks of discovery, some agreement might be an unreasonable timeline, and we can't deliver it.
- Clients might get pushy and micromanaging.
The biggest constant in most of these situations is the principle of being honest. Be honest with your clients, and most of the time, they'll appreciate you for it. Be honest with yourself and know what you can realistically do with the time and resources.
5.3 Other Challenges
- If you love to publish papers or contribute to Git, consulting might be unsuitable for you as all the code and data is owned by the clients, and consulting firms don't work in a research fashion.
- The fast-paced environment might not suit you if you are research-minded, as consultants have to adapt to new technology based on the client's requirements. You can do your research outside the office hours on your favorite tech, but that might disrupt the work-life balance.
- Sometimes, You might go solo at a client location, and you will need to manage the PM aspects like planning, maintaining sprints, arranging meetings, and scrums. It might be overwhelming if you don't get much support from the client.
- Success greatly depends on the project manager and client relations.
Nevertheless, there are ways to work around these problems by involving a senior leader for client engagement and an excellent PM to deal with timeline issues.
Conclusion
This entire article is purely based on my own one-year experience as an associate consultant in the Data and Analytics practice at Slalom. My perspective and duties might change as I progress further.
Nothing is right or wrong; It's like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle; if it fits well, I am happy for you. Otherwise, I am pretty sure something more suitable is out there. Thank you for your time. I hope you learned something!
One Year as Data Analytics Consultant— What's Unique About It? was originally published in Towards Data Science on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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