What I wish I knew before becoming a consultant

The socials are not optional (whatever they tell you)

I've been to more socials in consulting than I did at university, and I was social at university. There is a drinking culture — free drinks, which, fine. On a project away from home you'll grab a drink with the team before dinner most nights, and in the office there's always something on.

They'll tell you these are optional. When you first join, they aren't really. People notice who doesn't come, and this is where you actually bond with your team — which makes working together dramatically easier.

If you don't drink, go anyway and hold a water. I've stood there with a glass of water feeling like an outsider, and I'd still tell you to go. The relationships are the point; the alcohol isn't.

Your salary depends on where you sit, not just what you do

I assumed the world was fair. It isn't. When I saw what Deloitte paid in the US compared to the UK, the gap was substantial — and it isn't just country. Different parts of the firm pay differently, because operating units that sell more work pay better bonuses. Two people with the same title and the same performance can be paid quite differently based on which door they walked through.

You will probably put on weight

You're sitting down ten to twelve hours a day. Work past eight and dinner is free. On an away project, breakfast and dinner are both free — and you will absolutely get your money's worth. There's less time for the gym, and on intense projects there's none.

It's a small, stupid, real thing that nobody mentions in a recruitment brochure. Plan for it, because the alternative is noticing a year later.

It's much less glamorous than they sell it

They use words like "global strategy" and "optimise performance", and it sounds like you'll be Superman, swooping in to save enormous companies with five minutes on the clock.

In reality, for my first couple of years I was mostly building PowerPoint decks, making them look better, doing analysis, and sitting in a great many meetings. It got boring at times. And it takes a couple of years before you're leading the thinking yourself — however good you think you are.

Would I change it? No. My attention to detail and analytical thinking were built in exactly those years. But you have to be in it for the long haul.

The travel is not Shanghai

Firms use travel to lure you in. They show you Mumbai, Shanghai, New York. In the UK it's much more likely to be an unremarkable town, in a windowless room, in an industrial park with nowhere decent for lunch.

Big firms have offices everywhere, so they rarely need to fly you anywhere. And when you do travel, Monday to Thursday disappears — your whole personal life gets crushed into the weekend, along with the haircut and the doctor's appointment.

They say if you get two out of three — good location, good team, good project — you're winning. In four years I had exactly one project with all three.

Side hustles are much harder than you think

I joined assuming I'd build income streams on the side. Then reality: in the office nine to seven, plus commute, plus shower, plus dinner — and there is neither time nor energy left.

It's also bureaucratic. Approval takes months. Firms get nervous about anything that might risk the brand or distract you, and I know people across consulting who were asked to stop their side projects — some even asked to stop making YouTube videos that helped people get into consulting. I was lucky. But there's politics in it, and you should know that before you count on the income.

Soft skills matter far more than hard skills

I badly underrated this. Everyone joins thinking PowerPoint and Excel are the currency. They're the entry fee.

What actually determines whether you're good is communication, influencing, getting information out of people who don't want to give it, and being someone others want on their team. Listening and empathy were the two things I had to improve most, and they're the two nobody trains you on.

There's a nice etymological accident here: all the Big 4 began as auditors, and "auditor" comes from the Latin audire — to listen. It's still the most important skill in the job.

Get comfortable being the least knowledgeable person in the room

You will not know things. Constantly. Get comfortable with being lost, asking the obvious question, and being wrong in front of people more senior than you. The alternative — pretending — is how careers quietly stall.

And honestly? It's fun

Nobody says this. We talk endlessly about how hard consultants work, and then quietly go and enjoy ourselves.

Most of the time I get paid to talk to interesting people and mess around in PowerPoint. You work on things very few people get near — consultants worked on the NHS testing and vaccine rollout, on elections, on genuinely consequential problems. I'm not smiling every hour of every day, but the positives comfortably outweigh the negatives.

Be patiently ambitious

Don't expect to reach the top by thirty. A career runs about forty-five years. Take the long view, plan deliberately, and stay flexible enough to change your mind.

And have some sense of an exit plan — not because you're leaving, but because knowing what you want out of consulting is the only way to tell whether you're getting it. My own rule: if I stop learning for two years, I move.

If you're already in and quietly wondering whether you're stuck, the Stuck Type Diagnostic takes two minutes. And here are the mistakes I made once I was inside.