WSJ: For Once, Rookie Consultants Don’t Have Enough to Do

Excerpt from article by Lindsay Ellis

Joining the bottom of the consulting-firm food chain typically means working 12-hour days, juggling work during vacations and fixing PowerPoint fonts late at night. These days, many rookie consultants are just hoping to be on a project—any project.

For the first time in years, recent hires have too little to do—and that’s stressing them out more than the round-the-clock work they anticipated. Some young consultants “on the bench” or “on the beach”—lingo for being between clients—say they spend downtime exercising, watching Netflix or napping, while still getting paid. Such a scenario might sound too good to be true for many in corporate America. For this cohort of high achievers, who thought they’d pull themselves up the ladder through their work on thorny business challenges, it’s far from ideal. 

Too much time on the bench makes it harder for consultants to develop the strategic-thinking and communication skills that catapult them into their next jobs, said Matt Sigelman, a former McKinsey consultant who is president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank focused on the future of work. 

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