It’s going to sound pretty pessimistic for the first while throughout the post, but I want everyone to understand the full picture, and I’m starting with the worst, so bear with me.
It’s like being a new hire all the time
Sure, the job description is the same: IT consultant.But when you get in there, it’s like you’re being sussed from the minute you walk in, and you have to prove yourself and build up credibility.
Then you leave, and do it all over again, sometimes 3-4 times a year.
You also get interviewed for every single project by at least 3-4 people. I guess it’s a good thing, because I’ve since learned how to kill it in an interview, because I’ve had to practice so much.
But sometimes, getting grilled just ain’t fun, and I get nervous before every single interview.
Different folks, all the time
Sometimes you get some really fantastic people (colleagues and clients) that you would do anything for.These people just light your life, make you happy to go to work every day, and are a real pleasure to work the late nights with because they crack jokes with you even though they’re tired, and they work hard beside you, which makes you want to work harder to please them.
Other times, not so much.
This is true in every office environment, but the difference is that I have to face having a new dynamic of people that I have to feel out and deal with every time I go to a new client.
One client is never the same as another, and with my outspokenness, sometimes it’s appreciated by the client, and other times I have to just learn to shut my mouth and bite my tongue, which as you can tell on my blog is very difficult for me to do.
It’s like learning a whole new language and way of acting at work because it’s new to you.
You have to be careful not to get too friendly
Since the office dynamic is different for every single client, you have to learn how to adapt.
Even more so as a woman in IT consulting (talk about male dominated!), you have to be a firm, professional person.
You can’t joke like the guys sometimes because people see it as being too flirty when you’re not trying to be but if you don’t joke enough or sound easy going, people class you as an ice bitch who’s going to be hell to work with and they dread every moment with you.
But you have to learn your limits and not be a pushover.
It’s one thing to be nice, patient and accommodating, but when they’re not taking what you’re saying seriously, you need to sense that and bring out the big guns – your tough side.
Not only that, if you’re too friendly, people get upset when you don’t take their side when it comes down to them vs. management, and you have to constantly remember that you work for and were hired by management, not for them.
You can by sympathetic, but not a pushover.
An IT system implementation is like trying to feed foul-tasting medicine to a toddler.
They know they’re supposed to take it, they know they’re told to take it, but they just don’t want to swallow the stuff because it SUCKS.It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of long nights, their jobs just aren’t worth being away from their family and kids for so long, and the stress is really crazy during those times for everyone.
You want to be nice and friendly, but you can’t be nice all the time. People just don’t listen because you’re an outsider, you’re a woman, you’re a consultant, and they are wary of you. For a real life examples that I face all the time, clients never notice that the deadline for the system is approaching, and they tend to hem and haw on everything.
- They don’t finish the work, do it half-assed, miss the deadlines or all of the above.
- They don’t listen to you or want to learn the system because they think you’re there forever.
This is when you have to pretty much take a hard line with them, go to their superior, your project manager, or give them the harsh truth that you’re going to be leaving and they better know what the hell is going on before you do because it ain’t your problem when you walk out the door and they’re left with a manual that they don’t understand.
The first sentence out of mouth when I head on a project is: Don’t forget, I’ll be gone in ____ months, so I’m going to do my best to make sure you understand what’s going on, but I’m going to need your help.
You are an outsider
I think I said it above, but you’re not an employee. You cannot get chummy with them because you’re not staying there forever. And you cannot be too nice for the reasons stated above.
You can get friendly, but keep in mind that you’re there to do a job and you’re relying on these people to help you. The trick is to do it without triggering people’s fight or flight sensitivities.
Everyone knows from Dilbert that when a consultant comes in, it’s not a good thing. It means the company is asking for advice on how to cut costs (i.e. fire people) or increase efficiency (i.e. make them work harder).
Hell, if I were them, I’d hate consultants too.
The Travelling
Glamourous? For about 2 weeks.
Sure, it’s a new city every time, and it does get exciting to see what restaurants, or monuments they have there, but most of the time I’m not sent to sexy Manhattan, NY or San Francisco, CA.
I’m sent to Oh-So-This-Is-Where-All–The-Cows-Live, AK or Where-The-Hell-Is-This, TN.
Your nights are either spent alone in the hotel or in a restaurant looking over spreadsheets and papers, or spent with other lonely consultants trying to be friends with them when you just really miss your own family and friends.
Or, you just don’t get along with those consultants. It happens.
The hotel begins to be like a prison. You don’t have your things with you, the bed is too soft, too hard, or you’re just a germaphobe and wish that you brought your own sheets like Madonna (hah!), and the TV begins to be a drug on your brain.
You don’t really get a chance to see the sights because you’re just so darn tired at the end of the day, or you leave early on Friday nights to get back home for the weekends where you are immediately thrown into chores that have to be done around the house, or things that had to be put off in your absence like bills or taxes.
You’re also spending all this time waiting in the airports, munching on M&Ms watching and pleading the flights to all be on time.
Friday nights are a drag because you’re flying back and by the time you get in, it’s too late to go out or do anything, and you’re tired. Saturday is spent recuperating and catching up on errands.
Saturday nights suck because you want to stay in, but your family or friends want to go out and eat – something you’ve been doing all week long.
Sunday is dreaded because you have to either pack to leave early Monday morning, or leave Sunday night to be there for Monday morning.
Even with all of that, I love my job. Why?
You learn a lot about many different industries
See, working in different industries putting in an IT system, you have to learn the intricacies of everything they do there.
You end up learning about how things work, what industry terms are, how much money they make, who their customers are and why…. all very interesting conversations and tidbits that make you appreciate a car when you drive one.
Plus, you can talk intelligently at dinner parties or assess companies when you’re reading about how the economy is doing.
When it works, it’s such a beautiful thing
When the system works, or the solution that I put in works, it gives you such a high.
You get the feeling of: YES!!!!!! EUREKA, BITCHES!! EUREKA!
And you run around hugging everyone in the room.
All that hard work is worth it, and everyone who was a skeptic becomes a believer.
You make people really happy
You’d be surprised how a little comment like: Oh yea sure, we can do a report like that for you, makes people beam with little tears of happiness.
Those people are imagining hours of useless, wasted time on stupid papers being annexed with a clean, simple report, and helping people avoid mind numbing tasks feels good.
You make friends and network without trying
Everyone says we need to network. Well, yeah. In this job it’s kind of hard not to.
You’re new all the time, so you need to constantly introduce yourself, get to know other consultants, get to know the client and after months of long late nights, you end up making some lifelong networks of friends and people you can call on.
You also meet a lot of interesting people who have so many stories to tell at all levels of their career. From the factory worker to the VP, they’ve all got interesting stories or such different jobs that you can’t help but admire them.
You also learn what NOT to do in political environments and how to be a better manager by observing the dynamics between the VP and the factory worker and getting to listen in on both sides of the argument.
You’re pushed to learn useful life and business skills.
Long late nights? For months on end? Doesn’t sound like fun right? Except when it’s working on something that’s just about to come to fruition, you get excited and you’re willing to spend hours just getting master data JUST RIGHT.
I love finding solutions to problems. Nothing makes me happier than to get a problem that seems totally crazy, and to come up with 3 solutions that a client can pick from, with pros and cons.
You’re thrown with challenges, quick fixes, impromptu meetings, and you feel like you’re going to burst with stress.
But in the end, if you don’t go through a mental breakdown, you realize that you came out stronger in the end, and the next project will just get easier and easier to handle.
I guess I just like that part of the job. Being really pushed to my limit so that I recognize when I’m approaching it and learn how to avoid it.
Almost like business yoga.
You are built up to at least learn how to handle unexpected changes, adapt to new environments, deal with new people who don’t see eye to eye with you, and in the end, it teaches you how to argue effectively, become more organized and efficient so that you don’t waste time and helps you in all aspects of your life.
Sometimes you get benched.
Every consultant lives for this. It’s like the light at the end of the tunnel when you’re working.
When I worked for a corporation, if I didn’t have a project, it meant I could sit at home and get caught up on everything like going to the dentist.
It was nice to get even a day or a week off to get a break. Like a free vacation, and then you have a vacation on top of that!
The best was is when I got a nice long break after a particularly stressful project. That was really well deserved.
If you’re self-employed like me, you don’t really get that same satisfaction of seeing a paycheque deposit itself bi-weekly if you aren’t a salaried consultant, even if you make a lot of money in a short amount of time.
Psychologically, not as rewarding.
That’s about all I can think of off the top of my head.
It’s really not for everyone, and I’ve seen a pretty high attrition rate of consultants, mostly due to the travelling and the stress on the project.
You have to be well-equipped to deal with a lot of problems (yours, the company’s and the clients’) or at least have the means to deal with it.
