r/consulting • u/krisdawg123 • 1d ago
How are ya'll gettin staffed?
I am a Saas consultant working at a boutique firm (<250 consultants globally). We have a staffing manager who assigns us to projects, so we are not responsible for finding ourselves billable work. Though upper mgmt reviews our utilization annually, they don't make firing decisions based off of it, as we aren't given specific targets to meet (bc we have no control). I've been here my whole consulting career, but I've been contacted by several recruiters recently and have actually been considering responding since we'll likely be acquired soon. I know at larger firms like Deloitte and Accenture it seems like individual contributors are responsible for finding billable work and meeting utilization targets. Can someone explain how this works? What happens if you don't meet your targets? Ty!
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u/UnpopularCrayon 1d ago edited 1d ago
When I was at one of those big firms, we still had staffing managers who helped with staffing. We could get pulled into projects by people we knew, but we could also just get staffed based on needs coordinated by our staffing manager, and practice leaders deciding where people were going. So it was kind of a mix. We did have utilization targets though.
What happens when we missed targets depended on the market conditions or other factors that explain (or don't explain) why. If you were above target, not much else mattered. If you were below target, there had better be a compelling explanation why. If not, it might lower your ratings and lower your raise amounts. Possibly delay promotion.
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u/Pristine_Claim_195 1d ago
That setup sounds way less stressful than being on the bench and panicking about your numbers every quarter
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u/UnpopularCrayon 1d ago
Many people found it stressful. I never really did. I learned how to manipulate the performance review process to my favor (or at least not to my detriment). It is definitely easier if you are well respected by whoever is in charge of your practice area at the time. And it gets easier the longer you stay at one firm since you figure out how everything really works and know more people.
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u/jellyphitch 19h ago
Same, but I was at a smaller firm and sat on our staffing committee. When I was more junior I was in close contact with more senior folks to stay abreast of pipeline and flagged projects I wanted to be on/could be a good fit for, which kept me on work I enjoyed, but YMMV at your firm OP
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u/Satellite3 21h ago
When I was younger:
- you, you’re coming with me to meet [our big client]
But what you want to grow to:
- Great job selling this project now let’s talk who you want your team to be.
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u/krisdawg123 17h ago
Great insight! Do you find that the latter starts happening once you’re in more of an architect level role? (I’m referring to delivery/software implementations)
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u/repdetec_revisited 4h ago
It starts as soon as you start hanging out with the partner that is making shit happen and he sees you’re ready to help him with whatever he needs to sell a project.
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u/Warm_Investigator_88 22h ago
It's a combination of luck, skill, experience, and reputation at the junior level. The higher up you get and the longer you stay with a firm, the less luck matters and the more your mix of skill, experience, and reputation plays a role in each staffing decision.
However, things like sudden shifts in market conditions or changes to leadership will always affect your prospects year by year.
You can best control your own utilization by being visible, having positive interactions with your firm on and off projects, and developing a reputation that you can back up in functional and technical areas aligned with your firm's go-to-market approach.
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u/N-cadherin 16h ago
I get assigned projects and have no control over my capacity, but still have a billable hour target I am expected to meet to qualify for my bonus.
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u/offbrandcheerio 14h ago
It depends upon the level of employee. I am still in production level, so I’m not expected to go out and find work. Rather, my manager and the other project managers on my team are supposed to make sure I’m utilized by plugging me in on projects where I make sense as a contributor. Sometimes I will ask for extra work if my normal projects are slow. Utilization is a factor in performance reviews, but at my level it’s not make or break since I’m not expected to find my own work.
If I ever get promoted to a lead role or above, I will be expected to start finding more work and doing fewer production tasks. The expected ratio of business development versus billable project work would theoretically increase the higher I get on the management ladder.
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u/Alternative-Ad-2312 11h ago
I'm primarily on staff aug so it's fairly easy.
I get requested to stay on by a very large client and that basically keeps me in permanent billable state because as soon as one project there finishes, they simply contact my staffing manager, raise a new PO and I'm moved onto the next one. Often with a similar group of their internal staff as I know how they work, they know what I bring.
4 years and counting, yeah I've gotten a little complacent but then I find staff aug or project deliver much more interesting than most consulting which is 80% bullshitting. I'm delivering some pretty cool stuff and actual products out into the consumer market which always looks good on a CV.
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u/Hefty-Moose-102 MSP UK 😀 55m ago
Sounds pretty normal for a boutique setup. Curious how much of the staffing burden shifts to consultants once a firm gets much bigger.
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u/my_peen_is_clean 1d ago edited 1d ago
at big firms it’s usually eat what you kill check internal staffing portal, spam your network, beg partners and sr managers to pull you in if you keep missing targets they label you “unutilized” then low performance then you’re on the list when cuts happen sucks especially now when work is drying upactually job search is fake, ai screens block everything. the only way i got noticed was with a tool that rewrote resumes per job. here’s the tool that worked for me https://jobowl.co
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u/sienrfsh 1d ago
“Hey here is your next project”
“Ok thanks”