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I am great at finding problems, saving money, just makng things better in eneral. This applies to all sorts of businesses.
I have no formal training, but I am so confident in my abilities.
How do I start? I eben put an ad on craigslist to offer services for free and to no avail.
Any suggestions?
| Yes, I have a good suggestion. | 5 | |
| I have no clue. | 20 | |
| I'll just comment. | 4 |
Generally people like to see that you have experience in an industry before they will hire you as a consultant. Consultants are usually experts in their field with many years of experience.
Wel, yeah...but how do you get the experience? As I said in my post, I tried and I couldn't catch a break even offering it for free.
You get experience by actually working in whatever industry you want to be a consultant in. Before you start telling people how to run their business they generally like to see that you understand it.
For example, you might want to be some sort of IT consultant. Telling people people that you have IT knowledge is all well and good, but before they seek your advice they will want to see years of experience in the industry.
There are a lot of consultants in the industry I work in. I've been in it for five years at this point. If I told people I wanted to go out on my own and be a consultant they would laugh in my face because consultants usually have 15-20 years of experience in my particular industry.
Experience is important and there is no substitute for it.
You start by going to school for it... nothing comes easy, and in the school they'll teach you how to become one properly
Most Consultancy firms require you to hold a Masters in your specialist subject. If you are going it alone it is twice as hard to start up and if you have no formal qualifications you're not going to get anywhere in the subject area you're indicating.
Advice: Go to College, then University. Get work with a consultancy firm in the vacation (no matter how menial). Then go work for them for 2 or 3 years post qualified. THEN consider going it alone.
It's not a 'quick' fix scenario, you're talking about a full career and you need to put the work in at the start, if you're good then you'll shine.
Your first sentence, did you mean to write that you are good at solving problems? Are you in the uk because a good place to start would be to take an A-level in business studies, accounting and mathematics. Or if you have enough money saved and your as confident as you think you are why don't you start investing, build up your own portfolio.
Wig is absolutely correct....my grandfather began his own consulting company after being an engineer and leading some MAJOR drilling operations in Indonesia, Kuwait, Alaska among other places. He didn't just graduate from college and take this position either...he started as a hand on oil rigs, then roughnecked for years, then became a foreman before taking his rightful place heading up multibillion dollar operations. It's a tough climb but well worth it. His life experiences have had an impact on all of his children and even more grandchildren than just me.
Put your nose to the grindstone and get some experience under your belt. You're basically going to have to become a workaholic....
Your problem is that you want to head *right* into being a consultant.
When people say you need "experience" they don't mean experience in consulting but ... that you need to actually have a working history in the subject you want to consult othes on.
Say you want to be a "financial consultant" - you would need to learn finances and then have a job, often at least 10 years or more, in the field before even considering being hired as a consultant.
What you need to understand is that you're trying to enter a job where the other consultants have been working in their respective fields for that long or longer. And again I don't mean "consulting" but in the area they're consulting others about.
This isn't a job you can just walk in and take straight out of high school. No one is going to bank your advice if you have nothing to back it up with.
lol the poll voters are not of much help so far.....
7 people have no clue what to do and no one knows so far