Business / Management Consultant
Career Area: Planning and Analysis
Occupation Group: Business Analysis
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Business / Management Consultant earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $93,291
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $88,619
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Provides strategic management consulting to companies and businesses. Advises on ways to improve operations, increase efficiency, reduce costs and increase revenues; may recommend systems or organizational change. Works with business management analysts; frames problems for business clients, and develops plans to address inefficiencies.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 2123 | +16.4% |
| Nationwide | 47109 | +13.5% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Business / Management Consultant is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
- Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
- Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- Business Process: A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers.
- Customer Service: Working experience with the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.
- Business Analysis: Experience identifying business needs and and determining solutions to business problems.
- Management Consulting: Management consulting is the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance, operating primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and the development of plans for improvement.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Business / Management Consultant that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- SAP: Experience of using SAP, which is an enterprise resource planning software developed by the German company SAP SE. SAP ERP incorporates the key business functions of an organization. Business Processes included in SAP ERP are Operations (Sales & Distribution, Materials Management, Production Planning, Logistics Execution, and Quality Management), Financials (Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Financial Supply Chain Management), Human Capital Management (Training, Payroll, e-Recruiting) and Corporate Services (Travel Management, Environment, Health and Safety, and Real-Estate Management).
- Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC): The systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life-cycle, is a term used in systems engineering, information systems and software engineering to describe a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system.
- Microsoft Visio: Microsoft Visio ( VIZ-ee-oh) (formerly Microsoft Office Visio) is a diagramming and vector graphics application and is part of the Microsoft Office family.
- Tableau: Tableau Software ( tab-LOH) is a software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States which produces interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 15% |
| 3 to 5 years | 44% |
| 6 to 8 years | 21% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Consultant
- Business Consultant
- Executive Search Consultant
- Business Analyst
- Solutions Consultant
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