I was looking up private consulting and was worried that I wouldn’t have the certifications and then I remembered that I’m spending $50,000 on an MBA and my job title is “financial management analyst” so I think I’ll be okay lol
I don’t know why consultants make so much damn money,
Well, some make tons, some make reasonable amounts. I’d be in the “reasonable amount” category. While I’d average something like $150-200 an hour, I have to pay taxes on that and business expenses, so it’ll drop down to maybe as low as $75 an hour, depending on the job. Still fantastic money, but I’d be freelance, and freelance always has very high rates.
The other side of that is that a small business could pay a full time employee salary and benefits for this type of work and spend 75-100K a year, or they could pay a consultant 8K for the work to get done and he is incentivized to be efficient.
I wouldn’t charge hourly rates, I’d probably charge 2K for a job and hope to finish it within 12 to 15 hours.
My statistics professor runs a consulting firm on the side. He mostly does research and data analysis for smaller companies that need some research done but not enough research to warrant hiring a full time analytics guy. He makes enough that he just does teaching as a hobby.
But from what I’ve read it seems like most business consulting firms like Mckinsey are serveley orverpaid. They charge for things that most investment banks will do for free. Why pay a consulting firm for an LBO analysis when you can just go to the M&A division of your bank and get that?
Consultants make higher hourly wages because none of their taxes are being withheld by the employer/client, they receive no benefits like sick time or health insurance, and because their income is far less guaranteed than FTEs (there is often downtime between clients, and delays in billing...consulting income is often “feast and famine”)
