Last week, I tuned into Umbrex’s annual "State of the Consulting Industry" Q&A with Chad Oakley. Chad is CEO of the retained search firm Charles Aris which specializes in placing former consultants into senior FTE roles at industry and PE firms.

As I mentioned last year when I recapped the same event, there are few people as close to the pulse of the consulting industry as Chad is, so here are some highlights specifically pertinent to us as indie consultants, and gently paraphrased.

Top consulting firms have been “sold out” since 2025

• As has proven to be typical/cyclical, the large firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) overly-slowed hiring and accelerated outplacement last year, leaving their consultant pools stretched as work rebounded
• Firms who often look to source ex-MBBs for full-time hires are now facing a candidate’s market as consulting firms try to hang on to their internal talent
• Consulting firms are even recruiting from each other to fill gaps
• All of this points to opportunities for independent consultants to take on timely work at clients that the large firms don’t have the capacity to deliver

Hot spot industries for independent consulting work

Private Equity

• PE deals are nearing highs and firms need help with due diligence
• They’re also holding portcos longer, which has shifted the emphasis from solely cost-cutting to longer-term value creation

Services

• White- and Blue-collar services have been somewhat insulated by tariff disruption, creating influx of capital investment (aka - money for consultants and initiatives)

Hot spot functions for independent consulting work

AI (of course)

• Use cases
  • Increasing productivity of workforce
  • Automation at the functional level in a way that moves the needle
• AI consultant archetypes:
  • Strategist — finding/recommending those use cases within your client
  • ‘Hands on keys’ — actually installing an AI solution -- this is what Chad mentioned as exceedingly rare. There just aren't that many people that have actually done this successfully yet, but if you're one of them, there is no shortage of work for you.

Go-to-market (GTM)

• Generally speaking, consulting work has shifted to growth-oriented projects (rather than cost-cutting)
• This means anything related to the Chief Commercial/Revenue/Growth officer
  • Pricing, sales force optimization, solution packaging, demand discovery, product life-cycle, brand extensions, etc.

Naturally, anything at the intersection of AI/GTM/PE is the sweet spot for this season.

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If you’re trying to get into PE as a consultant, Chad says:

• Reach out to the principals/VPs directly, with your specialization (and potentially the name one of their portfolio companies) as the email subject line
• These are the individuals (not the Partners) that are directly on the hook to deliver the promised value creation and have the authority to hire external talent to do so

If you’re not on the AI train yet, Chad says simply: get on it:

• 75% of all consulting projects sold now have some AI angle to them
• 50% of all of Charles Aris searches now are requiring some level of AI-fluency
• Using AI for personal use is now table stakes
• Understanding AI's potential for your specialization is becoming non-optional

Umbrex typically makes the full conversation available via Will Bachmann’s podcast Unleashed. When it’s released, I’ll pass it along.

💡

-Wes