Junior, confirmed, senior technical consultant: which skills to develop?
Start your career as a junior technical consultant, evolve and move up through the ranks with years of experience, become a senior consultant and then a manager. What are the main skills you need to develop in your field and in your professional career?
HR Strategy
Technical skills essential for rapid progress
There are grades within the digital transformation strategy consulting firms, with different evolutions and missions. A junior consultant can become a senior consultant by evolving in his field if he meets the conditions often consolidated by the HR department in a skills grid. A change in position requires solid knowledge and specific skills.
During the exercise of his functions, the consultant will learn to master the different business solutions of the customers for whom he works and will increase his skills on the deployed technologies.
A technical consultant must obviously have real technical skills. It will be the ally of the company’s IT functions. He does not necessarily need to be an expert in the field of activity in which he evolves, such as human resources, finance, organization or
change management,
even if this is a plus for him.
A progressive career development
The technical consultant must propose to the customer the solutions adapted to his problematic and his business stakes.
He can evolve quite quickly in his professional career and become after a few years manager or project manager.
In many consulting companies, the career development of a consultant is like this:
- Junior Consultant (average duration 1 to 2 years)
- Confirmed consultant (average duration 1 to 2 years). He participates in the creation and presentation of deliverables to clients. He/she supervises the trainees/juniors and conducts interviews.
- Senior consultant: He has already several years of experience and has acquired certain technical and relational skills. He is in charge of managing the mission modules. He leads workshops.
- Manager / project leader: he/she is in charge of a project from A to Z. He is responsible for all the achievements. As a manager, he is in charge of mentoring and evaluating consultants. He is also in charge of pre-sales and recruitment of consultants (junior to senior).
Qualities to be deployed for an increase in skills: listening and autonomy
With an analytical mind and rational reasoning, the consultant is first and foremost a listener to his client. Because he will be able to carry out the project management, to apply his technical and functional knowledge, he will have to be very autonomous in order to have the necessary know-how to carry out the work.
Know-how is also essential for a consultant. In order to increase their skills and develop their career quickly, consultants must also develop their soft skills and in particular his emotional intelligence, empathy, time management, stress management and communication skills.
At Sqorus, we pay particular attention to the proximity between managers and employees. Our managers support our consultants in the development of their professional skills. We organize many internal events (more than 30 events per year) to keep in touch with our consultants.