Confessions of a Nomadic Consultant

For McNeill, major career changes have been the norm almost from the beginning. It all began in 1993, when he left the accounting/audit side of the business to concentrate solely on consulting, focusing primarily on the manufacturing and retail sectors. Five years later, following a one-year stint in the firm's Brussels office, McNeill found himself working on e-business-related projects while helping to build the firm's $2 billion digital markets practice from the ground up. Then, ready to take on another challenge, he moved on to join the firm's market solutions practice to help companies create technological links to their business partners.

For McNeill, making such bold career moves has become second nature thanks to his ability to leverage his skills and use them in different ways to succeed in new and emerging areas of consulting. "Once I got here, I realized how large an organization Andersen was" and how many opportunities it offered, he says. "It takes time to establish reputation, but this has been a very valuable experience. In the long run, you are better off with myriad experiences."

Moving up and moving around

After several years of working in KPMG Consulting's solutions center, Joseph Kiely knew his role there would soon end. Although many people might have started dusting off their resumes and calling in the headhunters, Kiely, a senior manager with in the firm's Stamford, CT, office, knew he could find something interesting within the firm. After all, he had already done it once before in his 11 years with the company.

Kiely began his consulting career in KPMG Consulting's world-class finance practice, where he worked to build basic consulting skills — leading an engagement, managing the daily implementation of projects, and working with clients. His first major career switch was the move to the firm's solutions center, where he assumed a major role in selling and marketing shared services centers, as well as delivering content. "I knew if I wanted to advance, I needed marketing and sales skills," he says. Although Kiely's background in finance helped him initially in making the change, he lacked experience on the sales and marketing side. However, by working with his mentor, Kiely was able to set some goals for himself, including improving his public speaking, and make the transition a success.

But that was not the end of his career changes. Working on the theory that managing his own career is the best strategy, Kiely takes a very systematic approach to these vocational switches. When he saw his work in the firm's solutions center winding down, he began looking for something new and became involved in the e-workforce solutions practice, working primarily in the consumer/industrial sector. "I began by looking at all relevant available opportunities within the firm and evaluating them to determine which one best met my goals," he says. "Then I laid out the pros and cons — where was the best place to go to get to the next level and contribute to the firm?"

Going inside

How easily consultants make the transition to a new career often depends on their firms. When Katherine Koh was a director at a large firm, she found that having moved quickly up the ranks actually precluded her from working in new areas of consulting. "As a director, it was not economically feasible for me to work as a junior strategist once the firm started to build new practices," she says. However, after only 2-1/2 years at Viant in Boston, she easily made the move from a project management role to being a member of Viant's internal corporate development group. This task force works closely with Viant's CEO to set the firm's strategy, evaluate potential mergers and acquisitions, and set business priorities.

"I got the position through a combination of push and pull," says Koh. After talking to her career "advocate" about her interest in change management and organizational development, she was in a position to be considered for a career move when the firm's CEO formed the corporate development group late last year. The CEO began by talking with advocates to identify people in the firm with the right skills and interests who could contribute to the group, and her name came up.

In her new role, Koh is able to draw on her consulting skills while working with a multifunctional team that includes corporate finance, employee benefits, strategy, HR, the firm's board of directors, and external advisers and bankers. "Most of the learning curve involved areas like corporate finance, an area that I have little experience with," she says. "It was like learning a whole new language."

The move to private equity

Thomas Kautzsch saw the writing on the wall. He was a consultant based in Germany, where manufacturing is the leading industry. He was heavily involved in strategy consulting in the manufacturing sector. The only problem was that strategy consulting for manufacturers was not growing. "If you think about consulting, it's definitely migrating out of manufacturing," he says. "There's not very much high-level strategy work to do." And so this vice president in the Munich office of Mercer Management Consulting began looking for a new challenge.

Fortunately, at the same time Kautzsch was looking for a new challenge, Mercer was forming a private equity group to seek out companies and provide consulting services in return for a portion of the value created by those services. "If there is a business with unique capabilities that are not explored to the full potential in terms of value creation, we can provide innovative strategy, create a lot of value, and capture part of that value," he says. "I believe there will be tremendous value in the convergence between the consulting industry and the financial community. And this is where the private equity practice comes into the game."

To ease the transition into his new role, Kautzsch spent half his time last year working his old beat as a strategist for the manufacturing sector and the other half in the private equity practice. This was an important bridge because of the tremendous changes in his role that took some getting used to. For one thing, to get the practice off the ground, Kautzsch is cold-calling private equity firms to build relationships and become known in the community. "This can be very frustrating, because you need a lot more leads compared to consulting" to make a deal, he says. At the same time, Kautzsch is getting used to the different value capture mechanisms involved in working with these businesses, rather than the traditional consulting fee model.

Overall, Kautzsch found that making this transition from within Mercer was much easier than going to a different firm. "You still have the network, and the more dimensions that you can keep constant, the easier it is for you to take a risk."

Sidebar: Embracing the Nomadic Tradition

For their part, major consulting firms are doing everything they can to provide new challenges to their nomadic consultants by emphasizing the breadth of opportunities available and providing the tools necessary to find and exploit those opportunities.

KPMG Consulting, for example, recently launched its "Opportunities Within Consulting" program to make intrafirm career opportunities much easier to identify and pursue. "We want people to understand that this is a broad organization with many opportunities," says Nancy Johnson, a director with KPMG Consulting in Radnor, PA. "We have a lot of good people, but sometimes it may seem to them that talking to a recruiter from another firm is easier than looking inside their current firm for new opportunities."

Recognizing that finding and pursuing a new career interest in a large firm can be akin to finding the needle in the proverbial haystack, KPMG Consulting designed its program to provide a good point of contact for consultants, primarily by providing a clearinghouse of information on available consulting positions and the skills required. The firm also developed an opportunities exchange that allows consultants to look for project openings for which they are qualified and that may help them move to a new area.

To use the program, consultants must meet certain eligibility criteria — primarily a year or more with the firm and a "meets expectations" or better performance rating. "We want people to make well-thought-out career decisions and we want to avoid simply moving around troubled performers," says Johnson. The firm also does not allow consultants to make a move simply to bump up their pay.

So far the program is working. "It used to be that you had to know the right person, or be able to find the right managing director to talk to or one who would talk to another on your behalf," says Johnson. "We act as an intermediary."

So, for example, if a consultant wants to move into a consulting area that does not have any openings, Johnson or one of her staff will contact the managing director to see if he or she is likely to need someone within the next three to six months. If that doesn't work out or the consultant doesn't have the right skill set for the new position, the staff will work with the consultant to develop a plan to help the consultant obtain the necessary training or project experience to be able to try again in six months or a year.

Sidebar: The Nomad's Playbook

Looking to make a career change? Here's some advice on how to position yourself for new opportunities.

• Be proactive and don't just expect a career change to happen.

• If you are doing the same type of work for more than 18 to 24 months, it may be time to look for new opportunities.

• When looking for a career change, don't focus on the title. Look at what kind of growth you want and what kinds of activities, work, skills, and experiences you want to develop.

• Take a proactive stance on choosing projects, rather than let them be picked for you.

• Know in what direction you are headed and where you want to be in five years. Then find the best opportunities to help you achieve that.

• Be clear about what you bring to the table, then talk to people and begin to understand what kinds of roles exist within the firm.

Sidebar: Power Points

• Skill-building has always been a primary reason among consultants to change jobs, but for some there lies an underlying fear of staying in any one place too long.

• Consultancies appear to be more forgiving of career flights-of-fancy, as they rehire people who once rejected their consulting careers to pursue jobs with dot-com start-ups.

• Any career change is made easier when a firm endorses and supports the nomadic tendencies of its people.