Breaking into Product from Consulting: A Personal Journey

Author(s): Shravankumar Hiregoudar

Originally published on Towards AI.

Table of contents:

1. As a Consultant
   1.1 My Role
   1.2 Growth
2. Overlap
   2.1 The Unique Skills Consultants Bring to the Table
   2.2 Leveraging Consulting Skills in the Product World
3. Transition

1. As a Consultant

1.1 My Role

At Slalom, I led AI and data science development and initiatives, delivering transformative solutions primarily for healthcare and life sciences clients. I also drove impact across big tech, insurance, retail, and banking sectors. I helped our clients look beyond raw data and dashboards, guiding them in developing strategies, building tailored data science solutions, and creating unique value for their businesses and customers.

1.2 Growth

My time at Slalom has been an incredible growth journey, where I transitioned from a specialized focus to embracing a ‘T/M-shaped’ career. This transformation was made possible by the fantastic people I had the privilege to collaborate with — they truly inspired and supported me every step of the way. Early in my career, my work leaned heavily on deep technical and theoretical expertise, but as I grew, I found ways to broaden my impact through cross-functional leadership. By the end of my journey, I was proud to have strengthened both — deepening my technical skills while learning to lead and collaborate more effectively across teams.

As a consultant, I had the chance to work with a big tech company on an exciting product. That experience didn’t just sharpen my skills — it also inspired me to shift my focus. I realized I wanted to move from short-term, high-impact projects to work that builds long-term, high-impact value for an organization. I became curious about the ripple effects of my contributions — how they make life easier for customers, support my colleagues, and help the organization grow. This shift felt like a natural step, not just to deepen my expertise in AI/ML but to round out other facets of my ‘T-shaped’ career and grow in ways that matter to me.

All this meant that I genuinely wanted to experience the product world.

2. Overlap

2.1 The Unique Skills Consultants Bring to the Table

Consulting equips you with unique skills that are valuable in product roles:

Pace
You’re often expected to hit the ground running. There’s little time to ease into a new project. Instead, you’re tasked with quickly understanding the intricacies of a client’s systems, sometimes within just a few days, and delivering meaningful results almost immediately.

Constraints
Budget, time, or resource constraints are part of the job. This often means you’re working solo on projects. It pushes you to become a self-starter, effectively managing your time and resources.

Reading Between the Lines
You develop a sharp sense for identifying key gaps and risks, and managing client expectations becomes second nature. It’s not just about understanding what the client says; it’s about reading between the lines and genuinely grasping where they’re coming from.

Forward-thinking mindset
Once a project wraps up, asking, “What can I improve? Where are the gaps? How can I deliver unique value?” is common. Acting on these insights often means presenting your findings to the client’s leadership. This sharpens your ability to craft impactful pitches that can distill complex technical insights into narratives that resonate with a broader audience.

Documentation
Documentation is another underappreciated but crucial skill. In consulting, you learn how to tailor project documentation to different stakeholders, focusing on what matters most to each audience. This adaptability ensures your work is practical and resonates with those who care about it.

While these skills exist in the product world, they become second nature for consultants.

2.2 Leveraging Consulting Skills in the Product World

Although they seem like two different worlds, the skills are highly transferable and often provide a fresh perspective.

Similarity
The ability to quickly assess systems, identify gaps, and manage expectations is valuable in consulting and product cycles. In consulting, you learn to drive results with diverse stakeholders, a skill that translates into building stronger connections with engineering, product, and leadership teams. Your ability to communicate complex technical insights is essential for aligning cross-functional teams.

Managing projects independently in consulting equips you to own product roadmaps and sprints, prioritize features, and align teams around a shared vision. The self-starter mindset from consulting empowers you to lead product strategy and optimization while thinking beyond the current engagement, allowing you to connect your work to the broader vision and uncover the missing pieces that drive more significant impact.

Contrast
In consulting, you focus on dynamic, results-driven relationships, delivering quickly under tight deadlines with various clients. You juggle multiple short-term projects, adapting fast. In product, the focus shifts to building long-term, collaborative relationships within a core team. You play a key role in shaping the product roadmap, aligning vision with broader goals, and prioritizing lasting value over quick wins — creating a more profound sense of purpose and impact in every step.

3. Transition

Crafting Your Transition Story
When preparing for a career shift, building a compelling narrative is key. Ask yourself: Why this change? Why now? Your story should reflect your reasons and the unique opportunities a product role offers. In product, you’re not just advising/building narrow-focused projects but actively shaping a product's lifecycle. This is a kind of influence that many consultants rarely get to experience.

Translating Consulting Experience to Product
Your consulting background is more relevant than you think. The key is to extract the right experiences that resonate with a product setting. Focus on key projects that demonstrate your ability to identify user pain points, solve complex problems, design tailored solutions, and are relevant in a product life cycle. Your consulting experience is your strength.

Focus on What Excites You
Be specific about what excites you in a product role. Whether identifying customer pain points or designing innovative solutions, make it clear how your journey has prepared you to thrive in these areas.

By focusing on these key areas, you’ll create a powerful narrative explaining why you want to transition and how your skills will bring value to the product world.

Conclusion

The last six months have been an exciting journey. While I continue to approach challenges with a consulting mindset, I’ve gained more product-specific knowledge. It’s been a fun learning experience, and I’m excited to see where this transition will take me.

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Published via Towards AI