Consulting (Service line)

I am a consultant in one of the world’s largest consulting firms. I am based in South Africa and am currently working on a project in Nigeria. I work in the customer relationship management (CRM) division. In projects, I am responsible for advising clients on CRM strategy and using our firm’s best-practice methodologies for tailor-made solutions. In my current project, I may also be responsible for implementing a strategy developed by one of my colleagues. In these roles, I interact with the business leaders at our client companies, and I am in constant contact with marketing directors or managers, sales directors, and financial directors.

Interacting with clients and decision makers. I get great satisfaction when a client begins to understand the objective and the benefits of implementing CRM and then becomes an advocate of the thinking within the organization.

The administrative tasks that are still necessary, including time sheets, expense reports, claims, etc.

I would have been bored working in a line management function, constantly fighting to introduce new ideas. The traditional line function would only be fulfilling if I led the business, because I have ideas of how a business should be run.

Also, consulting is not routine, and it offers opportunities to meet new and influential people. It also keeps you on the cutting edge of new methodologies and ideas of doing business.

In consulting, you must be assertive, persuasive (with an ability to use quantitative information in meaningful ways), not easily swayed, thorough, confident, and strong.

You must know why you are getting into it. You may eventually want to be a partner or you may want to get to know how businesses work in action, augmenting what you studied in the MBA program. These two routes require different types of behaviors at work. If you hope to be a partner eventually, you need to cultivate skills of being able to sell jobs, network, and get closer to partners. If you are augmenting your MBA experience, you may want to move more toward a generalist consultant path and work within different departments so that you prepare yourself for being able to “run a business.”

Have a goal. Consulting is not an end in itself.

My first job after college was as a sales representative in a fast-moving consumer goods company. Then I became a trade marketing assistant and assistant brand manager (Unilever), a brand manager and senior brand manager (Pharmacare), and lastly, a distributor business consultant (Mobil SA). In total, I had nine years of pre-MBA experience, all in South Africa.

• MBA, Wits Business School (Johannesburg, South Africa), 2000
• Honours Business Administration, University of Natal, Durban (Natal, South Africa), marketing management, a one year honors program, 1989
• Bachelor of social science, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg (Natal, South Africa), economics, marketing, management, 1987

I did not have an MBA concentration, but Wits prides itself on being good in finance, marketing, and strategy.

Master the hard courses like finance, statistics, and operations. These are important courses because they help you understand the nuts and bolts of business. The hard courses usually have one correct answer. Students should know how to arrive at these answers.

Also, never underestimate the soft courses, such as human resources, industrial relations, and marketing. Usually there are no wrong or right answers with these courses. They are simple, basic, and intuitive in class but EXTREMELY difficult in practice. MBA students must try and form their own robust frameworks of how the soft courses should work in practice. MBAs should then aim to implement these but allow for flexibility, as they may not be right all the time.