The New Consultant's Quick Start Guide

6Make the Switch Painlessly

In this chapter you will

• Identify opportunities to gain consulting experience before leaving your job
• Determine your transition plan

Gain Consulting Experience Before Leaving Your Job

You can gain consulting experience before you leave the safety net of your full-time job. You should identify several opportunities to get experience prior to leaving your job. For example, perhaps you can:

• Facilitate a weekend retreat for a local volunteer group.
• Conduct a team-building session for a civic organization.
• Offer your services on a freelance basis to a subsidiary or another firm in your company’s business group.
• Design new software for a local school system.
• Teach a class at your community college.

Let me clarify one important point. This is not about working on your business on your employer’s time. Not at all. You owe your employer a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. You can get experience before you leave your job by working outside of work hours. You can also volunteer for projects and tasks on the job that will give you the experience you need while at the same time assisting your employer.

If I sound a bit testy it’s because I’ve just read a half-dozen blogs where the authors encourage readers to “take advantage of” their current jobs. Among other things, they suggest using your employers’ data sources, replicating contact lists, printing materials, registering for training, contacting potential clients, and other actions for the sheer ...