I am certainly hoping that the requirement for being an independent consultant does not require many years of working for a company doing statistics. What if you worked in other disciplines before getting formal statistical training? I am doing my training now with the intent of working from home while my kids are still young. I am switching fields from teaching and am in my 2nd year of getting a PhD in Statistics. If this doesn't work, then I am making a colossal mistake.
Let me give my own case to explain,
I already have some experience in other disciplines:
1) A Master's in Biochemistry (8 years of laboratory experience)
2) Middle/High school teaching license in Physics, Math, and Biology in two states with 4+ years of teaching experience in public and private school.
3) 2 years University teaching experience
4) 5 years experience in town organizations and political action groups.
5) 10+ years web design experience, including knowledge of coding in html, Joomla, Perl, C++, Java
6) Trained HVAC technician with 7 years on the job experience.
7) Multilingual: English, French, Haitian Creole
I would echo an earlier comment on the board that the original poster, Mr. Islam, should try to work in areas that he has special knowledge of, and therefore knows the lingo and any special conditions of the field. I plan to focus my practice in Educational consulting (providing assistance to schools and teachers in developing data driven assessments/instruction) or perhaps basic science research support, since I have a lot of contacts and can speak the language in those fields better than a typical consultant. I have seen a number of statisticians make basic errors simply because they don't truly understand the context the client is working in, yet 99.9% of the people who need statistics don't know the first thing about basic statistics like p values or population assumptions. You have to know the context because its critical to communicate across the knowledge gap for your clients and get it right. The people who are going to pay out significant dollars need super consultants.
In addition, as someone with a background in small business, I think you need to make yourself stand out to be successful when you have little independent experience. Working with a senior consultant can be a good idea, but I wouldn't expect to earn much money during the learning phase. However, I wouldn't guarantee that striking out on your own is advisable to anyone who doesn't have a backup plan or a "day job" to support the early days while building your client-base and learning the landscape, however. I would work on making a business plan and think about answering questions like the following:
1.) Who are my ideal clients? Where do they work? What do they need? What software are they used to?
2.) How much is my service worth to clients? How much will they pay?
3.) How much will it cost to acquire the software needed to do the consulting?
4.) Who is my competition? Why would a client pick me over them?
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Michael Bilica
Graduate Student
University of Connecticut
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-19-2011 16:28
From: Michael Chernick
Subject: First time consulting?
To be frank I don't think you are ready to do consulting if you only have a little over 1 year experience as a statistician. I don't think the experience in clinical IT helps you either. Most successful consultants get a lot of experience first, learn how to interact with client and make contacts through work and professional meetings. It is a slow process. I think some of us have said a number of times on this eGroup site that good consulting requires much more than technical expertise. You need to listen to the client, try to become acquainted with his discipline and develop skill for find the right and if possible simple approach that answers the right question.+
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Michael Chernick
Director of Biostatistical Services
Lankenau Institute for Medical Research
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