Consulting job
 

I just accepted a job with one of the consulting agencies out there. While I'm a FF (personal, not business), I haven't really done the on the road stuff yet.
I was wondering if any of the veterans on this board have any tips to make life easier.

Here Ya Go...
 

First off, congratulations!!

Be sure that you have an account with all major airlines and hotels. And if you have to pay for expenses yourself and then get reimbursed for them, I would get a credit card that you're going to use ONLY for business purposes. If you'd rather have more frequent flyer miles I would get a card with the airlines that you'll use the most. If you'd rather have hotel points, then I'd get a card with your favorite hotel (and one that you'll be staying at often for business). Personally, I like the airline cards because of the additional perks.

And if this is your first job where you'll be traveling alot, then there are a lot of other things that you can do right now to make life easier and make for a smoother adjustment.

If you're going to be traveling each week or close to it, then be sure you have plenty of dress pants & shirts, a couple good pair of shoes, shoe trees, a good durable suitecase, one of those small plastic shoe shine things, a good cell phone & plan that will allow you to call anywhere in the US, at least a 2GB zip drive.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me or IM me on here.

How much travel will you have vs. time in your office? For example, over the 12 years I've been a consultant with my current employer, my travel time has ranged from 3-4 days/month as a backoffice grunt, to 13-14 at the most hectic as a project manager, back down to around 7-9 days/month now as a principal consultant. But there are many people on FT who travel 16+ work days each month.

I found that living alone, being gone more 11 weekdays per month was the point where my basic household chores get neglected and/or inefficient. For example, stopping to pick up dinner and spending $15, because I don't have any food in the house worth cooking or defrosting, because I never made it to a grocery store in a timely manner to get more supplies.

If you live alone, think about your mail delivery. Consider getting yourself a PO Box (cheaper but less flexible) or a UPS Store box (more expensive), so you can pick up most of your mail on your schedule, not theirs. I learned this lesson the hard way when I moved from an apartment building with a management office to a townhouse.

I like having a dry cleaners which will fold and bag/box laundered shirts - mine charges me an extra $0.50/shirt. Having properly folded and packed shirts makes it much easier to transport them in a 22" rollon. Set aside funds to have hotels launder the occasional shirt or press a suit for you - in the long run, it beats checking luggage.

If you are a big TV watcher and have high-speed internet at home, get yourself a TiVo and a Slingbox. The software loads on a $5 USB thumbdrive without installing anything on your employer's laptop, and you can control your TiVo and watch programming from your laptop.

www.gdifc.com :D

Savage, your reference has a great title and contains super satire.:D

Cheers

Congratulations and welcome to consulting.

I'll rattle off a few thoughts (some may have already been mentioned so if I repeat one, consider it for emphasis):
- Get luggage that is well designed and durable (I'm a fan of Briggs & Riley personally)
- Get quality, comfortable clothing. Quantity does you little good when you're hundreds of miles away from your closet.
- Related to the point above, look into wrinkle free shirts. Recent offerings are actually quite nice and should save you some ironing time.
- Move all of your bills and banking online.
- Per someone else's comment, get a credit card you'll use solely for business. Give some good thought as to whether you want to make it an affinity card that earns you miles or points. Considering how much you'll likely be charging, an annual fee may be worth it.
- Have your dry cleaner get your clothes to you folded ("in a box") rather than on a hanger. They're easier to pack and won't get as wrinkled by the trip.
- Pack so you don't have to check bags. Some people don't mind the wait, but it gets old quickly if you travel a lot.
- Travel with workout clothes. Eating out frequently + sitting all day + working late hours = a body that needs more exercise.
- Travel with a small alarm clock of your own. Don't depend on a hotel alarm clock or the wake up call.
- Learn your company's travel benefits and take advantage of them (but don't abuse them).

As a soon to be graduate that’s doing their applications in the coming weeks, I wanted to ask about the career progression in consulting.
From what I gather you spend 2-3 years in analysis, and then you are sent to do a MBA.
Now as you are doing this is it part time and you continue working, or generally full time?
After completing this are you set with a job or do they only take the top of the class? (I’m not doing too badly in undergrad, in the top 1.5% 2 out of 3 years).

Thanks for the info so far.
A few more questions.
This depends on the time away from home of course, but when you travel, do you check luggage or do you try to use only a carry-on?
Is there an advantage to buying a membership to one of the airline clubs, such as the RCC?

It'll depend on what your personal "wants" are, and how long you'll be at a specific client site. As for myself, I'm on a long project that will last until November. So I fly to the client city at the beginning of the week and then fly back home on Thursday nights. Due to budget constraints, we have to check out of the hotel on Thursdays when we travel back home. But I actually keep a bag in the hotel's back office containing my liquids (toothpaste, deo, etc. as well as a couple extra shirts and pants). This way, I don't have to check my bags every week and can instead bring a carry-on with just my clothes and shoes. But this might not work for everyone. It does for me since I stay at the same hotel each week though. If you're going to different cities each week, I would try to limit the amount of items that would require you to check a bag. For example, bring solid deo, just enough toothpaste to get your through the week, and use whatever the hotel gives you (shampoo, etc.). Checking bags is alright every now and then, but you'll get tired of doing it every single week. Plus, that will be just more of a chance that they'll get lost more often than not.

Depending on the cost of the airline club, it could be worth it. But that also depends on how long you'll usually be in the airport and if you will usually have a connection. If you have direct flights most of the time, you might not find the airport clubs very useful.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Mike

I did the out Sun back Thurs nite thing for about a yr - I could do 5 days with carryon , anything after that either required checked or hotel laundry.

You will find lots of discussions about the Red Carpet Club pros and minuses in the United Forum, same for the Admirals club in the AA Forum

Totally OT

If all you do is fly in, go to hotel, go to client site, fly out. It gets old really, really fast. I was married with teenagers when I did this the first time so all I wanted to do was get home. The second time I did it - they were 3 day trips and I was single :) - I learned to try and find at least one interesting thing to do in each city - no matter how tired I might be. I got to see some very interesting things and it made the travel a lot more tolerable.

This is probably a stupid question... but what exactly do consultants do? What does "consulting" imply? I "consult" my dad when I want to buy new golf clubs, but surely this can be done over the phone and not require a flight?

Mr Zhu thinks this is the best question on flyer talk all day. He can't answer it.

I travel with a carryon every single time. I got on something like 85 planes last year and I didn't check a single bag. Get a really good suitcase here - plan on spending US$200-300. I would recommend the Briggs & Riley 22" expandable suitcase myself.

Being based out of DEN United and the RCC will probably be what your choices are by and large. There are threads galore debating the RCC pluses and minuses on the United forum so help yourself to those. If you do decide to join, my suggestion is to wait until you build up some status on United - the price goes down quite a bit for membership (like $350 if you're premier exec).

In general if you're going to little podunk UX stations all the time, you're going to use the membership in DEN only so delays and however much time you want to spend sitting in DEN waiting for your flight. If you're flying to major cities, you'll be able to use it on either end and make use of it when things go south and you just want to get home (the major benefit IMHO). If you're traveling internationally and your employer flies you in business (C) and you wait a bit to make star gold (premier exec) status, you can generally not need a membership to use lounges on either end.

Consulting can have a zillion meanings and be in bazillion different areas and is used as a bucket term. Basically it means you have a speciality in some area that a company needs help with, they bring you in as a non-employee to help them with a specific project, effort or problem they have. You are not on their staff however. Firms will also use a consultant if they have a specialty short term project/need and dont want to be put someone on staff with that knowledge for it.

Some consultants work on one project at a time and devote months to that project, others, like myself, juggle many projects at a time and are with a given client for a couple days and then go see the next and rotate between them.

Why do we have to be on site (travel to them) it is not always necessary (I do a lot with clients by webex) but a lot of work involves meetings with key people in the company, working on systems that are already at the client, doing training with staff of the company and so on, that you have to be there for.

Hope this helps!

BTW to the OP who is going to travel for work, be ready for the impact it will have on your friendships and relationships, you will lose a number of them if you are gone all the time. I wasn't prepared for this change when I started. Other people's lives still go on while you arent around and you fall out of the loop really quickly *frown*