The job of a junior consultant is surrounded by two opposite clichés. On one side, hard labour: eighty-hour weeks, nights spent on slides, a sacrificed personal life. On the other, glamour: business-class travel, hotels, meetings with executives. Reality lies somewhere in between, and it varies a lot depending on the firm, the engagement and the stage of the engagement. To give a concrete idea, this article follows a typical week of a junior consultant, a few months after joining, on an eight-week strategy engagement for an industrial group. It ends with what this week says about the qualities firms look for in interviews.
Monday, arriving at the client
At many firms, the week starts at the client’s site. McKinsey mentions it in the description of its Business Analyst role: teams work directly with clients, and you may be asked to travel to their site. The French executive employment agency Apec 🔗, for its part, notes that the job can require a high degree of geographic mobility depending on the engagements.
For our consultant, the engagement takes place at the headquarters of an industrial group outside Paris. Monday starts early: a seven o’clock train, arriving at headquarters around half past nine. The team has a work room reserved for the duration of the engagement, the “war room”.
The morning is devoted to the weekly kick-off: the manager recalls the objectives, the progress of each workstream and the deadlines. Our consultant is responsible for a specific workstream: analysing profitability by product family.
In the afternoon, she has two back-to-back interviews with client managers: a division’s financial controller, then a sales director. These interviews serve to understand the data, validate hypotheses and gather points of view. She takes precise notes, which she writes up the same evening.
In the evening, the team has dinner together near the hotel. It is often there that juniors learn the most, listening to the manager talk about other engagements.
Day-to-day analytical work
Tuesday and Wednesday are devoted to the core work. For our consultant, this means:
- retrieving and cleaning data: extracts from the client’s management system, Excel files sent by teams, with their inconsistencies;
- building a model: a consolidated database by product, then margin calculations by family, by channel and by region;
- testing hypotheses: the team suspects that one product family destroys value; does the data confirm it?
- producing slides: each analysis turns into one or two slides, with an action title and a chart.
The typical day breaks into a few blocks: individual work in the morning, a quick check-in with the manager late in the morning, another client interview early in the afternoon, then production until the evening. Hours are long, but not uniformly so: some evenings end early, others late, depending on deadlines.
It is in this daily work that a junior builds their reputation. What is expected of them is not brilliant ideas, but reliable analyses, flagging a data problem early, and keeping their files in order so the team can pick them up. The slide-building rules described in our article on consultant slides are learnt precisely during these days.
Check-ins with the manager and the partner
The rhythm of the week is punctuated by checkpoints.
The daily check-in with the manager. Fifteen to thirty minutes, often at the end of the day: where each workstream stands, what results, what difficulties. The manager reviews the slides, asks for corrections, redirects an analysis.
The weekly check-in with the partner. On Wednesday, the partner comes to spend the day at the client. In the morning, they meet the chief executive; in the afternoon, they review progress with the team. It is an important moment for a junior: the partner asks direct questions about the analyses, and it is often in front of them that the consultant presents her workstream for the first time.
For this meeting, she has prepared three slides. The partner validates the main analysis, but asks for a check: does the product family that seems to lose money bear an excessive share of shared costs? The question changes the next day’s work.
These exchanges are formative, and they count in the review. Our article on staffing in a consulting firm explains why visibility in front of partners weighs on the rest of a career.
The steering committee and its preparation
Thursday is steering committee day; every two weeks it brings together the client’s chief executive, several directors and the firm’s team. It is the moment when analyses become decisions.
Preparation starts the evening before. The team assembles the document: about twenty slides, with an executive summary at the front. The manager reviews the whole thing, the partner makes final corrections on Thursday morning. Our consultant spends the morning checking every figure, harmonising the charts and printing the documents.
During the committee, the partner and the manager present. The consultant is in the room, ready to answer on her analyses if asked. That day, the finance director challenges a figure; she can explain where it comes from, citing the source and the method. This kind of moment, brief as it is, does a lot for a junior’s credibility.
The committee ends with decisions: dig deeper into the loss-making product family, launch a pricing analysis, prepare scenarios for the next committee. In the evening, the team updates the work plan.
Friday at the office
At many firms, Friday is spent at the firm’s office in Paris. It is a different day:
- calmer work: finalising analyses, writing up interview notes, preparing the following week;
- firm life: practice meetings, training, lunches with other consultants, recruitment interviews for the more experienced;
- contact with the mentor or career counsellor, to review the engagement and the consultant’s wishes.
Friday is also when you go home a little earlier, when the engagement allows. Weekends are generally preserved, except before an important deadline.
What this week says about the qualities sought in interviews
Read with a recruiter’s eye, this week shows why firms assess some qualities more than others.
- Rigour: the consultant spends part of her time checking figures, and a mistake in front of a finance director is costly. This is what calculations in case interviews test.
- The ability to structure: each analysis must answer a precise question and translate into a message. This is the purpose of the case structure.
- Communication: interviews with managers, presenting to the partner, answering in committee. This is what the fit interview assesses.
- Stamina and organisation: weeks are dense, deadlines close together. Recruiters look for signs of an ability to juggle several priorities.
- Team spirit: the engagement rests on a small team that lives together for weeks. Our article on the fit interview details how these qualities are assessed.
The strategy consultant CV template describes precisely this kind of daily life seen from the outside: ownership of the Excel model, slide production, client interviews and daily review by the manager. To build yours without spending your evenings on it, the ConseilCV editor handles the layout and produces a PDF that firms’ screening tools read correctly.
Frequently asked questions
Are junior consultants always travelling?
No. It depends on the firm, the industry and the engagement. Some engagements take place entirely in Paris, others require being at the client from Monday to Thursday. The general trend is a mix of both.
How many hours does a junior consultant work?
Weeks are long, with peaks before committees and final deliverables. Firms have developed arrangements to limit excesses, but intensity remains a feature of the job. Ask during interviews, particularly about weekends.
Does a junior present in front of the client?
Sometimes, on their workstream, especially in working meetings. Steering committees are generally presented by the manager and the partner, but the junior attends and may be questioned.
How many engagements does a junior do in a year?
It depends on their length: a few long engagements in transformation, more short engagements in strategy. Staffing generally tries to vary industries and types of engagement early in a career.