Consultant On The Bench
I work for a fortune 500 software consulting firm and i have never been on the bench.
Consultant on the bench. Also from a career aspect most consulting firms evaluate you at least in part on your utilization which is the number of hours you were billable over a year s time. The word bench can have a negative connotation in sports. As someone who joined an it consulting firm and was thrown into the fire from day 1 this bench thing blows my mind. Combing the fragmented market of consulting companies can be a considerable challenge.
You have very little to do and what you are assigned is often either busy work or unfulfilling at best. Next time i ll be detailing the first steps to take when joining a new project and what to expect when you re called off the bench to hit the ground running. Consultants on ppt trying to rearrange logos amidst a pandemic social unrest usps defunding and cold war like geopolitical tensions like. Lost in a hopeless no man s land.
What happens when a consultant is on the bench. Consulting firms looking for specialized subcontractors for a project candidates looking for a consulting job or a clients trying to find the right consulting firms to bid on a project all face the same problem. During my first four days at accenture consulting i was far from sitting on the bench. Consulting firms have to maintain some form of a bench to keep a staffing pipeline for the sales pipeline.
If you re a bench player it means you re supporting the team and spectating but not actually playing. If you spend a lot of time on the bench that can count against you. Once again it largely depends on the firm you work for. There s slow times where i m on call and just sitting around waiting for the client to report a problem but that s never more than a week.
The term bench time refers to the time spent in between engagements as a consultant while working for a consulting firm. Most consulting firms have bonus and incentive systems based on utilization billable hours and sales. For me this is the consulting version of siberia. The bench may be an unavoidable point at one stage or another in consulting but i hope these tips help you manage and make the most of your time there.
The consulting equivalent of sports being on the bench it is viewed with worrisome anxiety by junior consultants and relieved gratitude by senior consultants.