Most Important Skills For A Consultant At A Media Consulting Company
Aisha, a consultant, emphasizes three crucial skills: a "hunger to learn" and adaptability to unfamiliar projects, strong emotional intelligence to navigate diverse personalities and leadership styles within both the consulting firm and client companies, and quantitative skills for data analysis and informed recommendations. This highlights the need for both technical proficiency and interpersonal abilities in a fast-paced consulting environment where "you're thrown into projects" requiring quick learning and collaboration.
Communication, Problem-Solving, Data Analysis, Teamwork, Emotional Intelligence
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Aisha Han
Consultant
Media Consulting Company
Carnegie Mellon University
MBA
Economics, International Relations & Affairs
Arts, Entertainment & Media, Consulting & Related Professional Services
Consulting
Honors Student, Scholarship Recipient, Immigrant
Video Highlights
1. Flexibility and willingness to learn new skills quickly
2. Strong emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills to navigate diverse teams and client relationships
3. Quantitative skills and comfort working with data to inform recommendations
Transcript
What skills are most important for a job like yours?
And the hunger to learn. As a consultant, you're often thrown into projects where they need bodies, rather than something you'd have more subject matter interest in. At least, that was the case when I was a consultant.
So, being flexible, like, "Okay, this is the industry. This is a sector I don't know too much about." I'm going to have to learn a lot about it as I ramp up into the project.
Then use that to inform the recommendations, which hopefully aren't useless. Because a lot of consultants have been in that situation, the willingness to learn, the resourceful thoughts are to look into things on your own and be resourceful. That's really important.
Another skill is more emotional. Emotional intelligence, just understanding how to work with people, especially people with different work styles, different personalities, and leadership styles. That's reflective not only within your company but just the client you work for.
Oftentimes, the client that you're reporting to is a high-level executive of a company. Their leadership style might be totally different, or their way of communicating might just not be ideal, just something you haven't experienced before.
So, being able to work with lots of different people and still get the job done, still have people engage with each other and want to collaborate through all that, is a really good skill.
I think those are the two most important skills. I think also, the third will be maybe quantitative, having quantitative chops. So, not being scared of crunching numbers, making assumptions, looking into data, and extrapolating some form of opinion from it.
Those are the three big skills.