Professional consultant vs project consultant

The differences between professional consultants and project consultants can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 2-4 years to become both a professional consultant and a project consultant. Additionally, a project consultant has an average salary of $86,654, which is higher than the $80,770 average annual salary of a professional consultant.

The top three skills for a professional consultant include customer satisfaction, customer service and C #. The most important skills for a project consultant are customer service, project management, and client facing.

Professional consultant vs project consultant overview

	Professional Consultant	Project Consultant
Yearly salary	$80,770	$86,654
Hourly rate	$38.83	$41.66
Growth rate	11%	11%
Number of jobs	100,996	113,013
Job satisfaction	-	-
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Average age	44	44
Years of experience	4	4

What does a professional consultant do?

Professional consultants provide their expert advice to organizations and businesses. This professional advice helps the organization to improve its business performance in terms of management, operation, and strategy. Their main tasks are to detect issues and find ways to resolve them, conduct surveys and research an understanding of the business, and assess the pros and cons of possible strategies. Professional consultants must have good numerical, teamwork, and interpersonal skills to succeed. Also, they must have commercial awareness, self-motivation, and good attention to detail.

What does a project consultant do?

A project consultant is responsible for communicating with the clients for their specific needs, develop strategic plans, and determine project resources to achieve their business goals and objectives. Project consultants are employed across various industries, offering their knowledge and expertise to facilitate clients' requests and propositions. They also collaborate with different development teams to discuss project parameters and analyze opportunities to improve plans and progress efficiency. A project consultant must have excellent communication and critical-thinking skills, responding to clients' inquiries and concerns, and providing recommendations to ensure successful project completion.

Professional consultant vs project consultant salary

Professional consultants and project consultants have different pay scales, as shown below.

	Professional Consultant	Project Consultant
Average salary	$80,770	$86,654
Salary range	Between $69,000 And $93,000	Between $59,000 And $126,000
Highest paying City	San Rafael, CA	Newark, NJ
Highest paying state	New Jersey	New Jersey
Best paying company	Citi	Dell
Best paying industry	Finance	-

Differences between professional consultant and project consultant education

There are a few differences between a professional consultant and a project consultant in terms of educational background:

	Professional Consultant	Project Consultant
Most common degree	Bachelor's Degree, 64%	Bachelor's Degree, 67%
Most common major	Business	Business
Most common college	Northwestern University	Northwestern University

Professional consultant vs project consultant demographics

Here are the differences between professional consultants' and project consultants' demographics:

	Professional Consultant	Project Consultant
Average age	44	44
Gender ratio	Male, 56.7% Female, 43.3%	Male, 61.9% Female, 38.1%
Race ratio	Black or African American, 8.5% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 9.2% Asian, 10.2% White, 67.3% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%	Black or African American, 7.4% Unknown, 4.4% Hispanic or Latino, 8.5% Asian, 14.4% White, 65.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2%
LGBT Percentage	12%	12%

Differences between professional consultant and project consultant duties and responsibilities

Professional consultant example responsibilities.

Manage implementation of initial ERP modules.
Manage a team responsible for designing service-orient application architecture, standards and best practices guidelines, security and data access frameworks.
Provide guidance to clients in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
Provide and customize marketing materials for TLC affiliates.
Identify improvements and gaps in client's existing SOX programs and testing parameters.
Work with several manufacturing clients with international facilities, assisting in streamlining the SOX process and focusing on key controls.

Project consultant example responsibilities.

Lead a pilot project to introduce strong document management features to support document repositories in SharePoint.
Manage a team responsible for designing service-orient application architecture, standards and best practices guidelines, security and data access frameworks.
Create SQL scripts to implement test unit cases and ensure data quality.
Gather all systems, applications and processes documentation into one repository on SharePoint to enable incoming vendor education.
Implement strategic initiatives for operational transformation, including SDLC processes, role specialization, order tracking and labor tracking.
Develop amendment projection and confirmations user interfaces using JavaScript and XML and develop PL/SQL procedures and packages to handle business logic.

Professional consultant vs project consultant skills

Common professional consultant skills

Customer Satisfaction, 31%
Customer Service, 29%
C #, 11%
Financial Statements, 4%
Internal Audit, 2%
Regulatory Compliance, 2%

Common project consultant skills

Customer Service, 16%
Project Management, 12%
Client Facing, 6%
Project Scope, 5%
Process Improvement, 5%
Healthcare, 4%

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Professional Consultant vs Project Consultant

Updated January 8, 2025

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