a day in the life

Consultant

I’m JP and I didn’t have what you would call a ‘typical’ or ‘textbook’ journey into management consulting.  Prior to joining dandolo, I spent the last 5 or so years touring around Australia performing Shakespeare to schools and running workshops for students and teachers.  It was an amazing job, very challenging, and incredibly fulfilling to have such a positive impact working with passionate people.  After a combination of COVID’s effect on the arts industry, myself feeling ready for a change of career, and a mate in consulting saying “hey, you might like this line of work”, I’ve found myself in a role I never could have imagined - learning and engaging in activities that couldn’t be more different.  However, the most important things have remained consistent: the work is challenging, the people are passionate, and it’s clear the work we do is impactful. 

Here's what a typical Friday might look like: 

7:15am 

Every single morning at 7:15am on the dot, I’m forced out of bed to stop the endless meows of my cat demanding to be fed.  Sure, it’s annoying when I want to sleep in on weekends, but just think of all the money I’m saving on alarm clocks!  I pack my bag and head to work at around 8:15am. 

8:40am

I arrive at the office and say hi to everyone there. I then gloat at Tom that with Collingwood’s win last night, that puts me back at the top of the dandolo footy tipping.  This is extra painful for him because I don’t even really follow the sport.  I make sure to remind him of that as well. 

I then pick a desk for the day, check and respond to some emails, have another look at my calendar, and consolidate my plan for the day. 

9:15am

It’s my turn to do a coffee run, so I take requests for a coffee run and head out to one of the local favourites. 

9:30am

Nadya and I are working two projects together and next week will be a big one for both, so we have half an hour to update each other on our respective responsibilities and develop a plan of attack. 

10:00am

One of the projects we’re working on is an evaluation around a mental health initiative, and we’re right in the middle of a spell of interviews.  We’ve got a couple of zoom interviews in a row now, so we head to a meeting room.  I’m leading the first one with Nadya taking notes, and then we’re swapping roles for the second. 

I really enjoy leading interviews.  At dandolo, we have a series of internally developed and led training sessions for new starters that cover all things relevant to consulting – one of which is around conducting interviews.  Combined with a process of incrementally increasing consulting analyst’s roles over time, training has set me up to be confident in leading interviews or discussions with clients. 

12:00pm

Nadya and I debrief after a busy couple of hours.  We consolidate our notes, and summarise the extra juicy insights for the catchup with our project manager next week. 

12:30pm

Lunch time!  I’m getting warm Korean kimchi fried rice because winter. 

12:55pm

The music enthusiasts in the office do the ‘heardle’ for the day (a daily music quiz).  We’re on a hot streak at the moment. 

1:00pm

Laura shares an interesting finding from the school attendance project she’s working on, and I eventually become absorbed into a fascinating discussion about the context and objectives of the project.  One of the most engrossing aspects of this job is listening to others’ experiences on different projects and learning about concepts or issues we mightn’t have known even existed. 

1:30pm

I head to another meeting room for an interview with our expert advisor on a project on software in high schools.  It’s always exciting meeting such smart and creative people across a myriad of fields – not to mention the chance to share and test our findings. 

2:30pm

I begin doing some preliminary research for a project that kicked-off earlier this week.  It’s on teacher effectiveness and we’re considering ways of measuring it.  This is an area I don’t know too much about, so I love an exciting venture into the unknown.  Did you know that student perceptions of teacher effectiveness are one of the best indicators of teacher quality?  I didn’t! 

4:15pm

It’s time for the daily check of the online discussion forums that we’re moderating.  We’re doing a review of a series of new professional development programs, and it turns out that participants were enrolling for more reasons than we had originally considered. 

4:45pm

It’s Friday, so we finish a bit early in the office and gather around the lunch table to talk about the week and the weekend ahead.  There are still some cupcakes left from Stacey’s birthday, so we dig into those.  Obviously chocolate salted caramel cupcakes with coconut whipped cream are disgusting, but we wouldn’t want to waste.  So we reluctantly eat.