When you look for a job in consulting firms, you do not just have to prove hard skills, which are relevant to carry out certain tasks, but you have to show good soft skills too.
As a matter of fact, soft skills are an important part of the evaluation during the recruiting session; they do not depend on acquired knowledge but on the character. These kinds of skills can help firms to ensure success and to continuously improve the work environment in order to make it a better place; they are essential in organizations which deal face to face with customers. For these reasons, soft skills are increasingly becoming important if you want to be hired by consulting firms and they are equally weighted in the recruiting process, together with standard qualifications. Indeed, even though soft skills are underrated, a good curriculum with no interesting soft skills is not enough. As consultant woman said “In order to succeed as a woman in consulting you need to have a certain type of personality. It is very important to first of all consider yourself equally intelligent and capable of delivering high quality results as all of your male colleagues. Second, you should be inquisitive, enjoy solving challenging problems and willing to work hard even when you are unsure what the solution is. Moreover, you have to be very friendly and sociable because at the end of the day we are dealing with clients all the time and they are at the center of everything we do.”
In fact, in consulting, where you have to interact effectively with people, it is really important to be able to communicate and to be an easy-going person. You have to be a self-confident person: When you take a decision, it is fundamental to have confidence in your ideas so to encourage trust from your clients and your colleagues. What it is also valued is the ability to adapt to different paths: In management consulting you always change your team or your clients and you have to be flexible. In addition, you should have a positive attitude and be sociable as these two qualities will define your path: If you prove your colleagues to be someone on whom they can count, and if people perceive you as a charismatic person, it will be easier to be trusted.
Furthermore, you have to prove your ability to be a good member in a team: consulting is not for those people who do not want to collaborate. Sure enough, you must have the ability to be a good leader and to take responsibility but you need to be able to have a teamwork mind set.
Claudia Anselmini
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