There are many benefits to being a consultant, such as having the satisfaction of running your own business, controlling your destiny, and enjoying flexible work hours. But there are also numerous downsides. Anybody thinking about a career in consulting should think twice.

The biggest struggle is constantly looking for work. Once you become well established, work tends to find you, but it can take years for you to reach that stage. Until then, identifying and locating your clients is both time-consuming and stressful. The stress comes from needing the work but not knowing how and when prospective clients will respond to proposals. This can create another problem, which is that the more nervous you are about your workload the more you will be prospecting for new work. Before long, you can find yourself completely over committed as clients accept proposals. Though being in demand feels good, you'll soon suffer the stress of not knowing how you'll get your work done. You'll be so busy that you'll stop prospecting for new work, finish your projects, and suddenly find yourself without work again. This is the boom/bust cycle that most consultants encounter.

Even when you have work, you're never a real member of the team. Companies tell consultants only what they need to know, and often less than that. You won't have any sense of camaraderie that internal team members have. Moreover, the work you submit will often disappear into a black hole. Your client may be putting it to good use, but you'll never know. And no matter how good a job you do, it's a rare day when a client actually gives you any positive strokes or even thanks you for completing a job. I often send in a final report and don't even get an acknowledgement that it was received, let alone any feedback on my work.

There is a reason companies hire IT consultants. Either the work is extremely difficult and nobody internally is qualified, or everybody is too busy. So you'll either get extremely difficult assignments, or you'll get ones that nobody else wants. Needless to say, these are not the fun assignments. Then after you've worked so hard to develop a relationship with a key manager at a client company, the manger leaves and you have to prove yourself all over again.

One thing that most people don't realize when they start out as consultants is that suddenly they're responsible for everything in their businesses, including marketing, accounting, human resources, IT support, and performing errands such as going to the post office or procuring office supplies. You'll be lucky if you can spend more than 60 or 70 percent of your time working in your area of specialization. The rest of the time you'll be wearing other hats. You may not think this is a big deal, but just wait until it's time to do your taxes, or obtain disability or health insurance.

Then there is the loneliness factor. Some consulting jobs involve a high degree of interaction with other people. But many require you to work by yourself for extended periods of time. Even if you are the loner type, after a while you'll miss those water cooler conversations, and even those boring meetings that used to drive you crazy.

Finally, do you enjoy a regular paycheck? As a consultant, not only does the volume of your work go up and down, but the flow of payments from your clients varies widely as well, resulting in months where you earn huge amounts and months where you may not receive any income at all. Then there are some clients that don't pay, or do so only after you resubmit invoices that mysteriously keep getting lost.

Okay, I've said my piece. Though indeed these are all downsides, those of us who are entrenched in the consulting life simply learn how to live with them, and we certainly have no intention of ever returning to a "real" job.

» posted by ITworld staff

ITworld.com

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