Expense accounts, business travel, the chance to work on some of the most interesting challenges in business and government: yes, consultancy offers these things, but it’s not always as glamorous as it sounds. Here, consultants tell it like it is.

Next stop the industrial estate. Sure, flying to Berlin for work sounds exciting, but it’s far more likely you’ll be working in your client’s office at a business park somewhere near a motorway in the UK, says Fiona Czerniawska, a consultant and the director of the MCA’s think-tank. That’s if you’re lucky enough to get an office. Czerniawska once spent six months working in a Portakabin in a client’s car park. “We didn’t even have a coffee machine. But it was still a good project. Sometimes the ones where you have to work the hardest are the ones where you make the greatest friends and get the greatest satisfaction. That’s why it’s worth putting up with quite a lot.”

Welcome to the outskirts of, uh, where am I? That’s not to say that there aren’t opportunities for overseas travel. It’s more that you won’t get to see anything while you’re there except the airport, your hotel and the client’s office. Which will probably be in a business park near a motorway. “Going to Paris sounds like fun, but we just went around the outside of the city, spent five days in an office block, then got a taxi back to the airport,” Czerniawska says. Seb Finley, of Hays, agrees. “You can mention all these glamorous places, but really you’ve just been in someone’s office.”

Homebody. Not all consulting involves travel. Elaine Bennett, a director of consulting at Tribal, does most of her work within the Greater London area.

It’s not about the perks. “I thought it would be nice suits and ties, smiling, shaking hands, corporate lunches, perhaps a box at Wembley, but it’s not,” Finley says. “It’s work.”

It’s hard work. “Typically the hours are very long, from 7am until midnight on projects,” Czerniawska says. “You’re there to get things done quickly, and that takes time.” She once discovered that it was possible to work from Thursday morning to lunchtime Saturday without sleeping. Not ideal, but possible. “We discovered that we could function without sleep, but our gums started bleeding.” Hours do, however, vary between firms; Linh Thy-Vu, a consultant at Serco, says that she gets told off if she works at the weekend.

Mmm, burgers. Don’t expect fancy meals on expense accounts. “Every Friday night we caught the 9.30 train from Nottingham back to London,” Czerniawska says of one project. “It didn’t have a buffet car so we had a rota of people who got out on the way to the station to buy everyone’s meals. Then we sat on the platform and ate our burgers in the pouring rain while waiting for a late-running train.”

Alone at last. You won’t always have the luxury of a team at your side, Finley says. “Quite often we work on our own in the client’s environment, which can be fairly stressful,” he says. “You don’t have colleagues next to you who are automatically on your side. And you’re always putting across the reputation of your organisation – it can be hard to relax. You have to think on your feet.” You’re always on your best behaviour because you’re always on show.

Timing is everything. Working out how long it will take to get things done can be a challenge for less experienced consultants, Thy-Vu says. “I once told my manager I could get something done in three days but it took me seven. We had a family holiday and I spent the weekend populating a spreadsheet. I had my boyfriend roped in copying and pasting. We had told the client that it would be done so it had to be done.”

Start again from the beginning. Clients want to know that they’re choosing the right consultants. “I had to go through many rounds of interviewing to get into consultancy and I thought [that process] was over, but I do it all the time now,” Thy-Vu says. “It’s almost like starting a new job again.” And, depending on how long each project lasts, you could find yourself going through this process every month or two.

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