What IS "consulting" ???

Parent Cafe
21

<p>Definition of consulting:</p>

<p>You hire someone to look at your watch and tell you what time it is.</p>

<p>Longer version:</p>

<p>The consultants come in with the gray hairs to make the sales pitch to senior management. Then a bunch of very smart, very energetic recent college grads come in and set up shop. They spend a lot of time asking questions about everything you do. They take the answers back, put them through their particular “management consulting” process, and feed it back to you. Gray hairs come back to make the presentation. Senior management loves it. They may or may not implement the recommendations. Consultants move on to their next assignment. They will never know whether their recommendations were implemented, and if they were implemented, whether they worked.</p>

<p>While somewhat exaggerated, this is the way management consultants are often viewed by the employees of their clients.</p>

22

<p>If you ar not self-employed, consulting means that somebody else is getting part of your compensation. A lot of times, consulting means doing exactly the same job as regular employees but being employed by somebody else or self-employed. Contracts like this might be for several weeks or might last several decades and everything in between.</p>