Abstract
This chapter describes how graduate students identify client needs, negotiate paid executive consulting assignments, and deliver insightful solutions with the support of senior experts. It's the responsibility of grad consultants to scope, sell, and deliver cutting edge projects. Sponsoring clients can be located anywhere as long as the client possesses a problem or need worth solving. Mentorship ensures high performance and timely delivery by grad consultants, who work as independent contributors in the context of an international management consulting firm. Client executives can benefit from solving pressing business challenges by working directly with the next generation of international professionals. In return, grad consultants are offered a unique opportunity to develop leadership and consulting skills by being fully in charge of a real paying client project from start to finish. This is a call for action to overcome criticism towards traditional business schools, and their insufficient ability to develop practical competencies needed in industry and society at large.
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Datar et. al. (2010) report on many underlying reasons for a changing market place for business education, pointing out several curricula related flaws and proposing pedagogy and course design-related innovation. As stated by Le Maire et. al. (2017), the underlying issue is that graduates are inexperienced when enrolling and most business programs are not able to prepare them to hit the ground running when entering the workforce. Their recipe to address flaws in management education includes project-based education, consulting and practicum, and work-based learning and internships. In terms of practicing consulting skills, business schools have traditionally offered access to consulting clubs, case competitions, courses with consulting projects, internships, and capstone like graduate consulting learning opportunities (Kowarski, 2019).
Consulting Clubs: At most business schools, in the first semester, students are invited to join a lot of different interest groups and clubs, consulting typically being one of them. These clubs are a good way to get some initial exposure to management consulting and what it is, and especially to form connections with other students interested in this field. It’s unlikely that consulting clubs offer students any real experience with a consulting project or case. They’re more likely to be informational, sharing details on what firms tend to hire from the school, different types of management consulting, and offer practice with case interviews. Since these clubs are student-run, a lot of their value depends on who is running them and how well leadership transitions and knowledge is retained and refreshed from year to year.
Case Competitions: Many business schools offer grad students a chance to participate in business case competitions with other schools or programs. Consulting-minded students are particularly interested in these opportunities because they involve interesting problem-solving challenges and a chance to work on teams and potentially win recognition and rewards. Since being on a case team is limited to only a few participants, this option is a great way for top candidates to build their consulting skills, but unfortunately doesn’t let that many play and give it a try. Case competitions are fun and sometimes lead to entrepreneurial opportunities but they are very brief, always to some extent conceptual, and only scratch the surface of what consulting can be like.
Courses with a Consulting Project: In the past few years, business schools have invested in offering “action-learning” programs, which involve courses that include different types of real-world project requirements. For instance, analyzing and proposing solutions to an executive-level business challenge, or developing a business proposal for an entrepreneurial project. These projects are closer to what working in consulting is like. There is a real external client that wants help with something and needs some research and analysis and recommendations from outside its organization. According to Schaupp and Vitullo (2019), the faculty advisor or course professor finds the client and project to work on, gains their approval, and assembles the student team). The work is often done pro bono with no cost to the client and no project-specific income for the students, advisor or school. This type of grad consulting arrangement is not new and has some risks such as reputation risk to the school, if a client is unhappy with the result or if a student inadvertently or knowingly discloses confidential information. But with good precautions and oversight, these risks are mitigated and shouldn’t be a barrier. What is more, research conducted by Richter and Schmidt (2008) suggests that university-level management consulting courses contribute effectively in preparing graduates for consulting roles.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Business Development Process: An iterative process that starts from a deep dive into the problem area through desk and field research, followed by several quick sprints to define assumptions, followed by testing and verifying these before completing research and document discoveries for final client delivery.
Expert: A senior consultant who facilitates and supports graduates in leading and delivering impactful solutions to client projects sourced foremost by students themselves.
Job to Be Done: An approach often used in innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship to identify jobs that customers are trying to get done. A graduate student may invest in higher education to help accelerate their fledgling careers, while an executive may hire them to solve a pressing business challenge worth solving.
Experiential Learning: The process of learning through discovery and reflection on the doing. The term is used in many contexts and covers a broad range of settings and pedagogical approaches. In this chapter, explorative learning refers foremost to the process of grad consulting.
Grad Consultant: A current or recently graduated student, who is eager to identify client needs, negotiate paid executive level consulting assignments, and deliver insightful solutions with the support of senior consulting experts.
Action Learning: A process where a team or a group of individuals work on solving a real problem by taking action. Learning takes place on the level of the individual, team, and the assembly level.
Sales Funnel: A five-step process leading from initial sales planning to scoping with an executive sponsor a problem worth solving before the assignment is contracted and carried out (delivery and feedback).