Chapter 12

Life as a Consultant

In This Chapter

  • Deciding whether the consulting lifestyle is right for you
  • Looking at life in a consulting organization
  • Considering the potentially lonely life of an independent consultant
  • Comparing consulting with other types of work

Networking consultants have an opportunity to help not just a single employer but also many organizations during their professional career Working as a consultant is different from working in an organization, where you have responsibilities only to your employer and its internal operations. As a consultant, you won't be putting down roots in a single company (other than the consulting firm itself); instead, you'll be moving from place to place.

Consulting is fast-paced and highly rewarding but also unpredictable and stressful. If you're considering a position as a consultant, check out the pros and cons in this chapter.

Is Consulting Right for You?

In the 1960s, the original Mission Impossible TV series always started with a taped message to Mr. Phelps, who was given a life-and-death, world-peace-at-stake assignment in some remote corner of the world. Against all odds, Phelps and his team would overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and prevail.

Consulting is a lot like Mission Impossible missions. From one consulting gig to the next, you never know what kind of work, people, or company you'll encounter. Some assignments will be boring, others highly challenging, and others rewarding — for a variety of reasons.

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Consulting requires social skills

One of the things that you always come up against when working as a consultant is the desire for absolutes. “If I buy this firewall/antivirus/new device, I'll be 100 percent secure, right?” Or worse, “I thought that if I bought that firewall/antivirus/new device, I'd be 100 percent secure, right?” Of course, there's no such thing as 100 percent in security. Being any kind of IT consultant is only 20 percent tech and 80 percent social skills. So if you're not prepared to (or just don't want to) respond to questions like these, take a different job path.

Marc Gordon, Seattle

Consulting is fundamentally different from many other jobs. Take a look at the following questions. Are you okay with a job where you

  • May travel from 25 to 75 percent of the time, away from home for days or even weeks at a time?
  • Work with different people from day to day or week to week?
  • Won't know what city you'll be in a week or a month from now?
  • Are expected to be a seasoned expert but won't know what expertise you'll have to call on a day, week, or month from now?
  • Help build something but will not be around to see how successful it could become?
  • Sometimes work for people whom you'll meet only by phone?
  • Aren't around long enough to form deep relationships with the people you work alongside?

If you answered “yes” to most or all of these questions, consulting may be right for you. In the rest of this chapter, you find out more about working in a consulting organization or as an independent consultant.

Consulting Workload

Consulting is hard work — very hard work — for a variety of reasons. Let's take a closer look at the four major factors that will always try to take you down in a consulting job:

  • Intellectual fatigue: As a consultant, you're expected to be professionally superior to the client organization with which you'll be working. You are expected to have expertise and wisdom that surpasses that of the employees in your client's organization.
  • Performance fatigue: Because you're in front of clients, you have to be on your A-game all the time. Your clients expect a professional polish from a high-priced consultant; whenever you speak, all eyes and ears will be focused on you. You might feel as though you're on stage all day, every day.
  • Physical fatigue: You'll probably travel a lot, living out of your suitcase, eating in restaurants, and working evenings. You might not take the time for physical exercise while on business travel or working long hours.
  • Multitasking fatigue: Often you won't be able to concentrate only on the project right in front of you. You may be drafting implementation reports for clients you met recently, and reading documents from a client you'll be working with next week or next month.

Appearance and approach

As a consultant, you are often “the face” of the consulting firm (or yourself, if you're an independent consultant), to whom the client is paying big bucks for their expertise. You should always behave, dress, and communicate in a bit more professional manner than the client employees (without seeming arrogant).

Even when working for a consulting firm, you have some responsibility for sales; your day-to-day actions, customer service, and exhibited expertise will help your consulting firm maintain their reputation with the client and your success and professionalism will be shared with other companies and clients. You must always be mindful of keeping your eyes and ears open for possibilities of add-on work or new business avenues with a client as well. These additional responsibilities go along with being a consultant.

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Confidence as a consultant

You have to come into the room confident that you know what you are talking about and ready to listen to the customer and their concerns. You must roll with the material you have to work with and understand that what people are willing and not willing to do as well as their level of expertise are different.

Since you are not a member of the staff or the team you are working with, the trust level is different and you have to spend a lot of time justifying why you need to see what you need to see. Then you have to develop architectures, implement networks, or troubleshoot networks in a way that aligns with a business you may not know a lot about. You also have to understand that you will be spending a lot of time educating people about networking, technology, and other information related to the industry.

Bruce Lobree, Seattle

Working for a Consulting Firm

Working in a consulting firm can be a lot like working in a traveling circus. Some colleagues will stay the same but the scenery changes as you move from town to town (or client to client).

A job in a consulting firm will probably allow you to spend most of your time assisting other organizations with various aspects of their networking management or operations. Chances are, marketing people and sales people are selling the services that you and your consulting colleagues fulfill with your company's clients.

In many ways, work in a consulting firm can be similar to being an in-house networking expert. You'll be working with colleagues in the organization, which will give you a sense of normalcy (although you'll rarely see your colleagues if you work for a regional or national company). Plus, you'll have company benefits such as a retirement plan (a 401K in the United States), medical insurance, and paid holidays and vacation. In other words, you will still belong to an organization of your own, while you may spend most of your time inside client organizations and working with their employees.

In any job, you have to do what you're told. But in a lot of consulting jobs, you also have to go where you're sent. As a consultant, you'll be incented to work on billable projects to bring in the money that ultimately ends up in your paycheck (a portion of it, anyway). You want to avoid being on the “bench” (being paid while in between projects) as much as possible.

Consulting firm processes

Many consulting firms have established processes and procedures for a lot of operational activities. These processes and procedures drive consistency and can help the consulting firm increase its business without falling into chaos. Here are some examples:

  • Time accounting: An established method for tracking billable hours by client and by project, so that each client can be invoiced accurately for all services rendered.
  • Expense accounting: An established method for capturing billable and nonbillable expenses, such as travel costs, meals, and supplies.
  • Engagement management: Standard procedures for starting, executing, and completing projects. For example:
    • Pre-sales: In some consulting firms, consultants participate in pre-sales activities with new clients, so that clients can meet the consultant and ask questions about the proposed engagement.
    • Project kickoff: This procedure involves a conference call or an in-person meeting, as well as an exchange of documents and client contact information.
    • Project status reports: The consultant writes these, although he or she may need to follow a company template and format.
    • Written deliverables: Most consulting engagements include one or more written deliverables. You'll probably have a template and examples to follow so that new written reports are consistent with previous ones.
    • Project wrap-up: This process includes the delivery of written reports, as well as a closing meeting.
    • Post project: Includes a final accounting of all billable hours and expenses. Some consulting firms may do a project debrief to discuss what went well, what needed improvement, and how future projects can be performed better.

The consultant or other people or departments may perform many of these tasks. No one method is correct, but you may find some of the differences important.

Subject matter variety

In a smaller consulting firm, you'll be a networking generalist and may have a variety of consulting engagements. Depending on your areas of expertise, you could be chosen for many different consulting gigs, such as

  • Procedure development: You interview key stakeholders in a client organization and develop the organization's networking procedures.
  • Network architecture review: You examine (and in some cases, discover) an organization's network architecture, and make recommendations for improvements.
  • Selection of new networking technologies: You develop recommendations for new networking technologies, such as routers, switches, netflow, and network management. You may even conduct a bake-off of competing products to help decide which one works best for a particular client and then implement the selected product.

In a larger consulting firm (and in some smaller ones), you may be specializing in one functional area, and most or all of your consulting engagements will be focused on a particular subject matter or activity. For example, if you were in a network infrastructure group, you would be working with routers and switches; in a network management group, you would be one of the experts on network management tools.

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Consulting is itinerant work

Unless you get a long-term consulting gig, you won't be in one workplace for more than a few days or weeks. It can be difficult to forge long-term relationships with people in your client organizations, because you'll be moving on at just the point when you are getting to know and enjoy working with them.

When you are working as a consultant, you won't put down roots, in terms of hanging your hat in one organization. Instead, you're an expert, working on a particular task or project, and then you're out. You won't be around to see the fruits of your labor — at least not the longterm positive effects of your contribution. As a consultant, you have to simply be okay with that. But the other side of that coin is that you'll be able to help a lot of organizations, something you'd have little opportunity to do if you were working for a typical employer.

Peter H. Gregory, Seattle

Working in pre-sales

In many organizations, consultants will support the sales organization in the activity known as pre-sales. You might take part in sales calls to prospective clients. You're along for the ride so that you, the networking expert, can describe your approach to their particular problems. Seeing (or hearing) you in person also gives the client more confidence in the consulting firm and in you.

Pre-sales is essential to winning future business, but as a consultant you will face pressure to maximize billable hours (and complete tasks and projects on time for your clients). Often the hours spent on pre-sales must be made up by working extra hours in the early morning or evening to keep client projects on schedule.

Going It Alone as an Independent Consultant

In the movie Star Wars, the character Han Solo is the semi-romantic portrayal of an independent consultant. He is his own boss, he chooses what jobs to take, and he's in control of his destiny. You also get the impression that it's a lonely job, with only his sidekick Chewbacca as company.

As an independent networking consultant, you decide which companies you'll work with. Consulting is the ultimate in independence and the ultimate in risk, like climbing a mountain with no one to belay you if you fall.

Independent consulting is a lifestyle. It's difficult to master, and few are up to it. However, if you're independent consulting material, the rewards can be great. As an independent consultant, it's just you and your clients: You have no coworkers and none of the encumbrances of working in a company with others.

Independent consultants have to do a lot of things on their own:

  • Marketing and sales: These tasks require a different set of skills and can take considerable time. Sales is a very difficult job and typically requires a lot of energy and urgency, along with a fearless and outgoing personality.
  • Legal: You need to manage your contracts or have outside legal counsel from time to time. You'll want to develop template documents for nondisclosure agreements, statements of work, and a master services agreement.
  • Accounting: Unless you're an expert with small business accounting and taxes, you'll probably want to find an accountant to keep your books and complete your tax filings.
  • Earned time and benefits: As an independent consultant, you'll appreciate the concept of a paid vacation, holidays, and sick days. As an independent consultant, you still need time off, but you're not billing hours while you're not working for a client. You also have to pay for all other benefits, including medical insurance, life insurance, and health club discounts.
  • No colleagues: Without colleagues to talk with, independent consultants must look to the professional community for like-minded security professionals with whom they are willing to share ideas, struggles, and joys. Put another way: If you need help on a project, you have to find that help on your own.

The prospect of independent consulting is an intense, rewarding challenge to some, and terrifying to others. It's definitely not for everyone.

Image Nothing happens until a sale is made. If you can't sell, or hate to do so, you're unlikely to find much success as an independent consultant.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Consulting

Table 12-1 provides a comparison of working in a consulting firm, as an independent consultant, and in a regular organization (which could be a public company, a private company, an institute of higher learning, or the government).

Table 12-1 Consulting Work versus Internal Work

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