To become a consultant with no experience, identify your strongest skills to find your niche, build proof through small projects or portfolio work, and network with potential clients and other consultants.
Contrary to what you might think, you don’t need a resume full of formal consulting experience to start your career in this field. What you do need is expertise, proof of that expertise to foster trust, clear positioning, and networking skills.
Our guide breaks down every step of this process, showing you how to choose a path that suits your skill set, build credibility, and prepare to work with your first client.
Your First Moves as a New Consultant
- Choose a consulting niche that matches your strengths
- Define the problem you solve and who you solve it for
- Create a simple offer and build trust signals like sample deliverables, testimonials, or small project wins
- Protect your business venture with consultant insurance before you sign clients
Can You Get Into Consulting Without Experience?
Yes, you can become a consultant without formal consulting experience. Consulting is about helping clients solve problems, make smarter decisions, and improve results, and there are plenty of ways to build that kind of experience before ever holding a consultant title.
Here’s the truth: most clients couldn’t care less whether the last job on your resume has “consultant” in the title. That’s only one type of experience. The experience they really care about is whether you have the skills and knowledge to accurately and efficiently help them solve their problems.
That experience includes:
- Transferable skills: If your skillset includes clear communication, problem-solving, analytical thinking, and decision-making, you already have experience doing a lot of what consultants do. These are all skills consultants use every day to advise their clients, and they’re skills you’ve likely developed in other workplaces.
- Subject matter expertise: Clients need to believe you can advise them before they hire you, and highlighting your niche knowledge is an excellent way to build that trust. For instance, if you want to become a marketing consultant and have 10+ years in content marketing, leverage that when pitching yourself to potential clients looking to expand their content strategy.
- Personal experience: If you have firsthand exposure to the types of problems your clients need to solve or the type of work they need help with, that’s a valuable form of experience. Being able to tell a client “I’ve dealt with this before, and I understand the stakes” is meaningful and helps you build trust with them.
How to Become a Consultant With No Experience in 7 Steps
Starting a consulting business with no experience can feel daunting, but breaking it down into steps can help.
1. Identify the Expertise You Already Have
Chances are, you’ve already thought about this a bit, and that’s why you’re drawn to the world of consulting; you know you have expertise worth sharing. If you’ve worked in a specific industry for years, you probably have extensive knowledge you could lean into in your consulting career.
This could include:
- Marketing
- Business operations
- Education
- Project coordination
- People management
- Information technology (IT)
Determining where your expertise lies is instrumental to starting your consulting career. It helps you find your niche and demonstrates legitimacy and authority with your future clients.
2. Find Your Consulting Niche
It may be tempting to start broad and then narrow down your scope as time passes, but finding your consulting niche from the start helps you target the types of clients whose needs match your knowledge and skillset.
Below are some of the main players in the consulting world. Keep in mind, you can narrow down your focus even more within each of these categories, so you can continue to refine your niche even after committing to one path.
Management Consulting
Management consultants help management teams within businesses identify problems and develop solutions to help their organization run more efficiently and effectively. They work with executives, stakeholders, and employees to fix the root problem of their performance issues.
This often involves helping them integrate technology or build new initiatives, such as sustainability or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Learn more about how to become a management consultant.
Business Consulting
As their name implies, business consultants work with businesses of varying sizes to help them maximize performance and growth. HR consultants, IT consultants, and operational consultants often fall within this category.
Learn more about how to become a business consultant.
Education Consulting
Education consultants specialize in helping students, parents, teachers, and administrators thrive in the world of academia. They may help students develop study plans, assist with college admissions, or work with teachers and admin to improve their education strategies.
Learn more about how to become an education consultant.
Marketing Consulting
Marketing consultants assist businesses in improving their promotional strategies to improve customer engagement, bolster brand awareness, and increase sales. Consultants in this category may specialize in niches like digital marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), AI optimization (AIO), or social media.
Learn more about how to become a marketing consultant.
Match yourself to the perfect consulting niche with our ultimate guide to the different types of consultants!
3. Understand Your Potential Clients
Picking your niche helps you identify who your target clients are. This makes it easier to figure out what those clients actually need and expect from you, and knowing your audience is key to your success.
In this phase, aim to understand:
- Common business problems they face: What do most people and organizations hiring consultants in your niche need help with? This helps you understand what pain points to target.
- Deliverables they expect: What would they expect to get from you (e.g., increased sales, integration of a new tech platform by a specific date, etc.)?
- Pricing they anticipate: What rates do other consultants in your niche charge for similar services?
- The language they use: How do your clients describe themselves and the work they do?
4. Build Credibility Without Formal Consulting Jobs
Telling clients you’re an expert only gets you so far. They want concrete evidence that you have the knowledge and technical experience needed to help them or their organization.
So, how do you establish the credibility you need to land those clients? Try the following:
- Portfolio samples: Collect examples of previous relevant work into a digital portfolio. Add descriptions for each that explain the context, your role in the project, your thought process, and the results.
- Volunteer or freelance projects: Small businesses, startups, or people you know personally may be interested in working with you for free or at a reduced rate.
- Audits, frameworks, or mini case studies: You don’t need to be hired by an organization to demonstrate what you could do for them if you were. Build your portfolio by conducting informal audits of webpages, marketing strategies, or other elements related to your expertise and crafting case studies. Then, show how you would identify the problem, what recommendations you’d make, and what the target results would be.
- Testimonials from similar work: Ask for reviews and quotes from former coworkers or clients who can vouch for your knowledge and skill set. Make sure any testimonials you get are specific and relevant to the work you want to do as a consultant (e.g., a former manager explaining how you helped improve a process at your previous workplace).
- Thought leadership or educational content: Create social media or blog content that demonstrates how you think and your unique approach to solving problems. An Instagram carousel post on the subject of “3 Reasons Why Your Workplace Has High Attrition” could show credibility in the HR consulting world.
Pro Tip: Learn more about the most impactful marketing strategies for consultants.
5. Determine Your Offer and Positioning
By this point, you know what category of consulting you’re drawn to, and understand how to leverage existing skills in place of formal experience. Now, it’s time to narrow down who you want to be as a consultant and how you’re going to communicate that to prospective clients.
The big question you need to answer is this: Who do I help, with what problem, to what result?
Let’s view this through the lens of an aspiring educational consultant.
- Who do I help? Public school administrators
- With what problem? Low rates of success across the student body with standardized test scores
- To what result? Increasing standardized test scores and improving student outcomes, like college acceptance and graduation rates
Defining yourself this way on your website, socials, and promotional materials gives prospective clients a much clearer picture of what you actually do. They’ll have an easier time picturing you working with them and solving their exact problems if you’re able to name them directly.
6. Start Networking and Having Consulting Conversations
You’ve heard it a million times, but it remains true: networking is critical to your success as a professional in every field, and consulting is no exception to this rule.
Some of the best ways for aspiring consultants to do this are via:
- Informational interviews: Unlike a job interview, your end goal here is not to land a position or a new client. Instead, you’ll speak to other consultants in your field to learn more about what the job entails. Messaging them on LinkedIn or asking for a chat at networking events are great ways to go about this.
- Niche communities: Facebook groups and Reddit boards are excellent places to see what your target clients are talking about and struggling with. Reply when you have something to contribute, but avoid being overly self-promotional or salesy.
- LinkedIn outreach: Many people make the mistake of using LinkedIn direct messages as an opportunity to pitch themselves to a prospective client. Instead, approach them from a place of curiosity and learning. Briefly introduce yourself as someone who works/is interested in their industry, ask them a question about a problem they may have encountered, and see if they reply. Follow-up questions are okay, but keep them brief. Always thank them for their time.
- Professional groups: Unlike online communities, these are usually more formal and include conferences, industry associations, and local meet-ups. Don’t go in with the sole purpose of gathering contact information; go in with questions and discussion topics, then follow up with people you had meaningful conversations with.
- Former coworkers: If you’re transitioning from working within an industry to consulting within that industry, reach out to former peers to see what kinds of issues they’re dealing with and how those are being addressed. You’ll leave these conversations with valuable insights, or at best, a referral.
7. Get Client-Ready
Congrats — you’re almost there! It’s time to make sure you’re set up for success before you land your first client (because it’s not a great look to be scrambling for paperwork while onboarding someone).
This includes:
- Consulting certifications: Many certification programs are available to consultants, including ones focused on project management, talent acquisition, and business finances. While they aren’t always required and they aren’t a one-for-one substitute for real experience, they can boost your credibility to prospective clients.
- Basic business setup: Not the most glamorous part of starting your consulting business, but absolutely essential. This includes choosing your business structure (LLC, sole proprietorship, etc.), setting up your bank accounts, and creating your website.
- Contracts: Contracts set expectations, offering legal protection for you and your clients. While the exact terms of your contract will vary from one client to the next, work with a lawyer to develop a basic template that includes essential details like the scope of your work, terms of payment, a timeline, and a termination clause.
- Consultant insurance: Insurance is designed to shield you from the cost of liability claims you may face in your line of work and protect your business from those expenses. It also helps you appear more professional to clients, and many will ask for a copy of your Certificate of Insurance (COI).
First Steps You Can Take This Week to Start a Consulting Career
While the seven steps outlined above are meant to help you navigate the process of becoming a consultant with no experience, completing them all takes time and diligence.
Don’t be discouraged, though! Here are several tasks you can check off your list this week that will set you up for success and move you closer to landing your first client.
✔️ Identify your strongest area of expertise
✔️ Choose the consulting niche that best fits your knowledge and skill set
✔️ Review what clients in that niche need by visiting online forums (e.g., Reddit and Facebook)
✔️ Create one sample deliverable or mini case study to include in your portfolio
✔️ Update your resume and LinkedIn profile to reflect strengths relevant to your consulting niche
✔️ Explore certification options if they are valued in your niche
✔️ Claim a website domain for your consulting business
FAQs About Becoming a Consultant With No Experience
What Kind of Consultant Should I Become?
The type of consultant you should become depends on factors like:
- Where your experience lies: If you already have professional experience in a specific industry, the transition to consulting within that industry will likely be easier
- What problems you feel qualified to solve: Identifying exactly what problems you help clients overcome allows you to home in on what kind of consultant you want to be
- What’s in demand: Make sure the problems you’re trying to solve aren’t too niche
How Can I Network Effectively Through Informational Interviews?
Approach informational interviews with a genuine interest in learning and building relationships. Prepare thoughtful questions, actively listen, and follow up with gratitude to maximize networking opportunities.
Is Consultant Insurance Necessary?
While it may not be legally mandatory, consultant insurance is highly recommended to protect yourself and your clients from potential risks and liabilities, both professionally and financially.
Providing professional advice to individuals and organizations puts you at risk of being sued if your advice leads to financial losses for your client. Consultant insurance is designed to cover related expenses such as attorney’s fees, settlements, and judgments if this happens to you.
