Reply to Government Consulting - what exactly is this?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm another one of the posters you mentioned.

I've been doing government consulting for about 8 years pre and post-MBA.

Some example engagements on the government side of the house might be identifying cost-avoidance/cutting opportunities, setting up a shared service organization in IT or finance, doing operations and supply chain optimization work, setting up an PMO, developing an IT strategy (cloud, mobile, etc), developing an HR transformation plan, developing cost and operational predictive models, etc. You might also see opportunities where the agency may be offering a new public service and a consulting firm is be brought on to frame how that's done. Many of the strategy engagement are for business line leaders or C-suite offices and are short in duration, but if you do a good job, the agency can keep you around for years. There are many, many more government contracting engagements that are purely staff-augmentation where you're basically a government employee doing regular government employee work, albeit at a higher cost to the government.

As previous posters mentioned, the rates are much lower than you see on the commercial side and the salary lower, but the hours and travel are better. One of the previous posters on the previous thread mentioned he/she switched from commercial to government. At some companies (I know Deloitte does this), you get to keep your commercial-side salary. I'd be curious to see if that affected staffing opportunities because a commercial-side salary might price you out of some federal consulting positions. There's also significant competition out there from large and small firms, and the government does often give preference to small, disadvantaged businesses for contracts. Sometimes you'll see large firms become subs to small firms simply so the agency can cut costs and get small business contracting credit.

McKinsey and BCG also have government practices in DC, and I think Bain just opened one, although I don't think they're very big. I believe they also do some foreign government work as well.

A few of my MBA classmates came into the government strategy consulting practice of my company expecting big, hard-hitting strategy engagements at the upper levels of government. When they found out engagements are typically agency-level and sometimes operational/transactional, they jumped ship, some even going to the commercial side. It really is more of a lifestyle choice. Change is slow in government.[/quote]

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