How To Become A Consultant/Team Lead: What It Is and Career Path

What is a consultant/team lead and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Alanah Mitchell Ph.D.

The consultant/team lead plays dual roles for their organization. First and foremost, they serve as a leader for a group of employees, ensuring that all the team's goals are met properly and on time. Secondly, they provide consultations to other members of the management team to improve various business processes.

The duties of a consultant/team lead may vary, but in general, most of their time is spent on devising business improvement strategies, conducting evaluations on current business practices, and monitoring the implementation of new strategies or policies. They also work alongside other managers and leaders to ensure the optimum performance of the company.

Having a college degree in business is advantageous and is often a requirement for this position, especially if it is a master's in business administration (MBA). One also needs to have at least a few years of experience before they can qualify for a leadership role, ideally in the same line of business.

For this position, the average salary is around $47 per hour, roughly $97,000 a year. The highest-paying jobs are usually found in the finance and healthcare industries, with salaries as high as $130,000 on average.

What general advice would you give to a consultant/team lead?

Alanah Mitchell Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Drake University

I recommend students work on developing a portfolio of technology knowledge, skills, and tools. Early project and internship experiences can also be very helpful in finding the first career opportunity after graduation.

ScoreConsultant/Team LeadUS Average

Salary

7.5

Avg. Salary $97,051

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

5.3

Growth rate 9%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.19%

Asian 14.56%

Black or African American 10.29%

Hispanic or Latino 11.05%

Unknown 5.01%

White 58.90%

Gender

female 41.01%

male 58.99%

Age - 42

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 42

Stress level

5.3

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.5

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.8

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a consultant/team lead

Explore consultant/team lead education requirements

Most common consultant/team lead degrees

Bachelor's

64.4 %

Master's

18.8 %

Associate

9.0 %

Start to develop specific consultant/team lead skills

Skills	Percentages
Customer Service	34.69%
Product Knowledge	20.94%
Project Management	5.56%
HR	5.43%
Business Process	2.15%

Complete relevant consultant/team lead training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New consultants/team lead learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a consultant/team lead based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real consultant/team lead resumes.

Research consultant/team lead duties and responsibilities

Manage resources for CPOE go-live support and lead MEDITECH advance clinical efforts for all ministries at health system level.
Develop new UNIX shell scripts to automate the ftp process from the mainframe over to the UNIX box.
Manage design and development of cloud-base billing application for streamlining payroll and invoicing, as well as offering real-time business analytics.
Create and maintain HTML, CSS and jQuery web content in a Drupal environment.

Get consultant/team lead experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a consultant/team lead. The most common roles before becoming a consultant/team lead include consultant, team leader team lead and senior consultant.

Prepare your consultant/team lead resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your consultant/team lead resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a consultant/team lead resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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