So you want to be an IT consultant. You've heard about these consultants, send them in your industry
and thought hey I can do that too. Or maybe even had no idea what they do and how they do it.
So in this video we're going to cover what they are and how you can become one.
So first of all let's answer the question what is an IT consultant? An IT consultant is someone
who works in the IT industry, external to the company that they perform work for, and seen as
someone who has expert and specialized knowledge of a particular area. Let's break this down. So
it works in the IT industry. There are many types of consultants out there but the IT consultant is
of course a consultant in the IT industry. External to a company they perform work on. Generally
IT employees get paid by company X to provide services or perform work for company X. As you
can see in the box on the top right the employee is inside the company. An IT consultant is actually
someone that gets paid by one company to do work for another company. So in the example in the
bottom right you can see they're paid by company X but they provide services from company Y.
Expert knowledge in a particular area. IT consultants are perceived to have expert
knowledge in a particular area of the industry. This can often be only perception. Many IT
employees have specialized knowledge and can easily transition over to the consulting role.
So the main benefit of being a consultant is a variety of work that you can perform.
Consultants are generally hired for a single project or multiple projects at once rather
than a permanent role. This means that once the project is over the consultant's role is usually
over and they move on to the next one. This might seem like a bad thing for someone who's never
experienced this before but I believe it's a great benefit. I've been consulting for years
and this is the part I like most about it. You really get to experience working for different
clients, different projects, different industries and different people. It all builds towards
your overall experience and knowledge in how to be an IT consultant.
There are of course some downsides to being a consultant. You may find yourself moving around
clients a lot depending on the work you do and the type of projects. This can result in not having
a sense of belonging so you might feel you're not able to personalize your desk, make good
relationships with work colleagues and become familiar with clients. This is part of the role
of being a consultant. As long as you're aware of these traits and are content with them then it
shouldn't be much of a problem for you. So now you know what a consultant is, what the pros and cons
are. We're going to look at the final step on how to be an IT consultant. We do this in a pretty
similar way to finding a job as a normal full-time employee. The only difference is that you're
looking for jobs in consulting companies. These are companies that operate some internal staff
such as recruitment and HR and management but the majority of their staff are IT consultants
who perform work for their clients. Depending on the area where you live there may be a variety
of IT consulting companies. Some of the big companies such as HP, IBM and Accenture would
have consulting areas. There may be others in your country or city that would also fit.
So you start by looking for jobs on your preferred job hunting site. I'm from Australia so I've used
Seek in the past. You look on these sites for IT consulting roles. You submit your resume, get an
interview and land the job. Sounds pretty easy right? Well I'm sure you have a desire for career
improvement and high motivation as you're watching this video but I'll go into detail on this topic
in a future post. So when you get a job in the company of your choice they'll start by sending
you out to a client site. Companies that have agreements with them to supply IT services.
Depending on the agreement and the client getting a role they can involve in an interview,
a resume or just a simple introduction. From here you perform your work for the particular client
and as part of the project or team that you're on. So that's it that's all there is to it.
Some of the topics mentioned here can be broken down into more detail which I'll do in a future
