consulting?!

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Right then guys n girls i'm wondering what steps to take next in my career path and I've been doing support for 10 years now. I've been thinking about moving into consulting recently as I think I would have more of a chance to progress in that sort of role and keep virtualzation as a main part of it.

So those of you who are consultants what's it like are there any things I should look for or avoid in a consultancy firm when interviewing . Also what's all this ote business on the job ads, I take it that its on target earning so as a rule does that mean if a job is advertised as 50-70k ote is there a basic salary below that?

 

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I like consulting.. its the type of work that never gets boring and it has a lot of front end work, meaning you get to talk to people and help their business... For me, the number one reason why I like consulting is because its challenging work a lot times and you get to work with technology and get to do stuff that you would normally not get to do if you were working for in house IT. The experience that you would get from consulting is a big plus too, you'll learn and pick up stuff a lot quicker than you would if you were working for in house IT. Consulting is also a great way to specialize in something you love doing... If its time for you to move on, I'd definitely consider consulting or at least a role similar to a consulting gig.

 

Yes that's right, basic salary plus commission of sorts.

Depending on where you work and what you do that could be made up of various things, number of billable days you're utilised for, bonus for being off the bench for so many days of the year, commission on any products or services sold etc.

For instance a consultant job in a particular area I was advised of recently was something like basic of 25/30k, with OTE about 45/50k once you took into account the utilisation rates, expected utilisation bonus, car allowance etc.

 

Thanks for the info guys, I'll keep all that in mind.

 

Mate, I absolutely love being a consultant, I spend all day talking about meeting business objectives using technology.

I work in the field of MS stack, VMware, Storage, Networking, with most of the work I do on VMware and Storage.

You need to change your mindset around as generally with in house techies, its how can I work round this, how can I save money? Whereas I work on long the lines are what are the impacts to your business if you don't spend X, if you spend X now you will get this return on investment.

Be prepared for alot of travel, this my be within a 100 mile radius or a geographical region. Make sure you feel comfortable presenting to board level and to other IT professionals.

But perhaps the most important thing, do something you love, if that's VMware, go for a job that is focused on vitrualisation and storage.

 

Great advice thanks cragie, I think thats why I'm now considering consulting, as I do love all virty tech and in a support role I wont get to keep uptodate with it and play with all the cool stuff, every customer is different so you'd get a wider breadth of knowledge. Now I've designed and implimented the vsphere environment at work I'm not really enjoying the thought of going back to helping staff with excel queries all day . I joined to do this project and want to move on before I lose site of that fact.

 

consultants are not hands on role

 

its more like 30 percent technical rest just business skills

 

If anything, I think consultants have to be pretty skillful and have a business mind... in terms of how much technical consulting work you do is dependent on the role.

 

Consulting as a term is used in wildly different capacities

Consulting, technically, is not very hands on, although a technical consultant does not need to know much business, much like a business consultant doesnt need to know much tech

Consulting in general is a cross between professional services (in larger entities, called PSO) and pre-sales (Systems Engineers, Sales Engineers etc)
in smaller consultancies / resellers this is bridged by highly versatile staff who can handle the load, the diversity, and the imense variety of things you need to be aware of

in larger outfits, you are potentially much more focused, but still equally as challanged

you have to be comfortable learning new stuff, deploying stuff you know little about, talking about new stuff, talking about stuff you can't implement (you can be pre-sales in a solution without being post sales for it)
you need to be very well rounded, the more you know, the better you will do at the job

no, you don't have to be business focused, especially at the entry level, and yes, even at the top of the game ,there can be plenty of hands on (ignore the above poster) but, the more business focused you are, the less hands on you tend to do, but the balance changes over time, and from role to role

 

Spot on mate, especially the bit about you have to be comfortable learning new stuff, deploying stuff you know little about, talking about new stuff, talking about stuff you can't implement, it made me LOL as it's so true.

 

so you basically go out and bull ?

correct me if i am wrong but i am not ment to offend anyone.