A lead consultant supervises the work of a team of junior consultants at a consultancy firm. Just under the principal consultant in the company hierarchy, lead consultants oversee daily operations related to running projects. They keep regular contact with clients and make sure everything goes according to schedule, as efficiently as possible.
Lead consultants receive and review proposals from their team, make decisions regarding the projects, and act as a mediator between clients and the team, communicating the clients' needs and finding solutions to potential problems. Before making key decisions, however, lead consultants need the approval of a principal consultant.
The position of a lead consultant requires significant experience in consulting, more than five years usually. In order to be considered for the job, a degree or technical qualification will also be required in your field of expertise.
Lead Consultant Overview
Lead Consultant Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a lead consultant. For example, did you know that they make an average of $45.91 an hour? That's $95,487 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 9% and produce 56,000 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Lead Consultant Do
There are certain skills that many lead consultants have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed creativity, analytical skills and communication skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a lead consultant, we found that a lot of resumes listed 15.8% of lead consultants included business process, while 11.7% of resumes included customer service, and 7.7% of resumes included procedures. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the lead consultant job title. But what industry to start with? Most lead consultants actually find jobs in the technology and finance industries.
How To Become a Lead Consultant
If you're interested in becoming a lead consultant, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 42.9% of lead consultants have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 33.2% of lead consultants have master's degrees. Even though most lead consultants have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a lead consultant. When we researched the most common majors for a lead consultant, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on lead consultant resumes include associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a lead consultant. In fact, many lead consultant jobs require experience in a role such as consultant. Meanwhile, many lead consultants also have previous career experience in roles such as senior consultant or senior software engineer.
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Lead Consultant Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a lead consultant can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as project manager, progress to a title such as information technology director and then eventually end up with the title senior director of information & technology.
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Average Salary for a Lead Consultant
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
State of North Carolina Lead Nurse Consultant (Personal Care Services) Lead Nurse Consultant (Personal Care Services) | State of North Carolina State of North Carolina | 03/21/2021 03/21/2021 | $51,89503/21/2021 $51,895 |
Xactly Enterprise Lead Consultant Enterprise Lead Consultant | Xactly Xactly | 03/20/2021 03/20/2021 | $105,00003/20/2021 $105,000 |
Blueoptima Lead Consultant-Data Science Lead Consultant-Data Science | Blueoptima Blueoptima | 11/24/2020 11/24/2020 | $135,00011/24/2020 $135,000 |
Sears Lead Home Improvement Consultant 383 Lead Home Improvement Consultant 383 | Sears Sears | 07/28/2020 07/28/2020 | $37,56607/28/2020 $37,566 |
Sears Lead Home Improvement Consultant 134 Lead Home Improvement Consultant 134 | Sears Sears | 07/26/2020 07/26/2020 | $37,56607/26/2020 $37,566 |
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Lead Consultant Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Lead Consultant. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Lead Consultant Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Lead Consultant resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationTop Colleges for Lead Consultants
1. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
2. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
3. Northwestern University
Evanston, IL • Private
4. Maine Maritime Academy
Castine, ME • Public
5. University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA • Private
6. California State University - Bakersfield
Bakersfield, CA • Public
7. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Public
8. Villanova University
Villanova, PA • Private
9. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Public
10. Bentley University
Waltham, MA • Private
Top Skills For a Lead Consultant
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 15.8% of lead consultants listed business process on their resume, but soft skills such as creativity and analytical skills are important as well.
- Business Process, 15.8%
- Customer Service, 11.7%
- Procedures, 7.7%
- Project Management, 5.4%
- Architecture, 4.5%
- Other Skills, 54.9% See All Lead Consultant Skills
Best States For a Lead Consultant
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a lead consultant. The best states for people in this position are New Jersey, Hawaii, California, and New York. Lead consultants make the most in New Jersey with an average salary of $104,729. Whereas in Hawaii and California, they would average $103,763 and $103,429, respectively. While lead consultants would only make an average of $101,636 in New York, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Rhode Island
$100,628
Avg. Salary
2. Pennsylvania
$96,202
Avg. Salary
3. New Hampshire
$95,392
Avg. Salary
How Do Lead Consultant Rate Their Jobs?
Top Lead Consultant Employers
We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ lead consultants and discovered their number of lead consultant opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that Infosys Public Services was the best, especially with an average salary of $94,733. Capgemini follows up with an average salary of $97,669, and then comes Wipro with an average of $85,314. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a lead consultant. The employers include Target, Infosys Public Services, and Two95 International Inc.
Lead Consultant Videos
