A profession?

A client rant that proved quite interesting, might have a point too:

"Engineers study engineering before they become an engineer, lawyers study law before they become a lawyer, doctors study medicine before they become a doctor.

Now tell me, why I'm constantly nervous about the use of young inexperienced consultants being deployed in my organisation costing me money when half of them haven't even studied busines?!!"

Discuss

because someone who studied aerospace engineering might be better or equally good than a business graduate at understanding the logistics system/business processes of an aviation/aerospace company for example?

I hear this old line trotted out again and again - "why are we paying so much for fresh-faced graduates with no experience" - implying that the graduates are working without direction and supervision.

In most consulting engagements, the real value-add comes from the more senior consultants who have a lot of real-world experience under their belt. But you still need someone to do all the lower value work, hence the graduates.

I once had a client who insisted only on using senior people. He received a huge invoice, but he didnt want to yield to our idea that a £4k-a-day consultant's time is not best utilised preparing powerpoint slides.

Oh well, you know what they say about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing...

Valid points one and all, but clients might then reasonably expect to pay a rate for the junior consultants that reflects their knowledge and experience, and the nature of the work they will actually be doing.

I would hazard that rates in excess of a thousand a day are somewhat adrift of this, particularly in the context of their dislocation from the actual costs of said junior consultant, who is earning about twenty quid a (contracted) hour. This can make the client cynical that relatively high cost junior resources are being (over)loaded onto his job merely to maximise profit for their bosses.

I really dont get the point of these threads.. Take IB for example. Do you think that all the work is done by a superstar banker? Wrong.

All the hard work is done by Analyst, namely fresh graduates with very little experience. All the DCF and comparable analysis are done by these young folks as well as the slides. Not just business graduates are able to do so. What the senior banker does is shaking hands, giving presentations and covering with the clients the most difficult issues.

Same applies to consulting. Fresh and usually smart graduates are perfect for data gathering, excel modelling and powerpoint. But the work they do is extremely important and can be done equally well by engineering graduates and the likes.