Making a shift into the consulting world may feel daunting, especially if you have no prior exposure to the industry. As such, learning how to be as confident as a consultant presents a conundrum. How are you supposed to be confident when you do not have a consulting background?
Case interviews are synonymous with consulting recruitment and are characterised by unfamiliar problems. How then can you ace the interview confidently when it’s your first encounter with a particular business case scenario?
What is Confidence?
On the surface, confidence appears to be a product of high self-esteem. After all, if you’ve never experienced social acceptance and, as a result, lack certainty in your dealings with new people, your lack of personal conviction will give people the impression that you lack confidence.
The management consulting industry requires smart people who feel comfortable working in the spotlight and are able to think on their feet. This is where you encounter the confidence conundrum. In order to be successful, you need confidence, but in order to be confident, you need the certainty that comes with already having experienced a measure of success.
It seems that success and confidence form a positive feedback loop, like the one below.
Of course, if confidence were the key driver of success, then we would expect to see aspiring consultants routinely undertaking “confidence boot camps”. However, this doesn’t happen.
While often observed together with success, confidence by itself is obviously not sufficient. And even if you would feel better about yourself if you were more confident, the relationship between confidence and success remains unclear. After all, increased success typically causes people to feel more confident rather than the other way around. What’s more, confidence may not even be necessary for success. There are plenty of CEOs who lack confidence in their leadership abilities, models who lack confidence in their looks, and celebrities who lack confidence in their popularity.
Confidence is not necessarily linked to any external marker, but rather rooted in your self-image.
Being a confident consultant is not necessarily a product of any previous experience in the consulting industry but rather of a belief that you are well equipped to tackle new challenges.
This is evident in young consultants in the industry. Many of them do not poses an extensive background in their client’s industry yet go about solving their problems forthrightly.
How to be more confident
The only way to be truly confident is to become comfortable with what you lack and then work towards improving that.
Confident consultants are confident because they’re comfortable with their shortcomings in projects and interviews. They realize that mishaps are simply part of the learning process, a reflection of their lack of knowledge not on who they are as a person.
So, how can you adopt a healthy level of confidence as you make a transition into the consulting world?
1. Accept Your Limitations
There is comfort in accepting your limitations. Rather than trying to “fake it until you make it”, which can sap your confidence and lead you to develop an ‘imposter syndrome’, accept that there are gaps in your knowledge and skillset and get to work on improving yourself.
Practise more cases. Attend networking events hosted by management consulting firms to meet consultants and other likeminded people. Interview with multiple firms.
2. Treat Yourself Like Someone You Care About
When your best friend makes a mistake, do you treat them as though they are incompetent and judge them harshly?
Of course not.
You console them, point out the reasons why it’s okay to err sometimes, and maybe give them some suggestions on what they can do differently next time.
3. Be Open to Challenges and Challenging Personalities
It is no secret that working on a fast-paced project team for a demanding client can produce some tension. This adds to the stress of delivering an effective solution.
As an aspiring consultant, you should be mentally prepared to be challenged by people and situations that you have not encountered before. Many top consulting firms have structures in place to help you resolve challenges in a constructive way. For example, you may be assigned with a mentor who you can turn to for advice.
Final thoughts
For management consultants, who deal regularly with senior managers and C-suite executives, confidence is just as important as capability. Your success is likely to come down to how you marry the two.
Accept your limitations, learn from your mistakes, and embrace the challenges that will ultimately be thrown your way.
Oduor Ochieng is an Economics Honors student at the University of Cape Town. He has experience working in a Medical startup and Fintech company.
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