Consultant Performance Review

Export the consultant's chargeable hours by engagement and project code from Harvest, BigTime, or whichever tool the firm uses. The history grounds the review in the actual work — which engagements, which workstreams, and what mix of partner-led vs. independent delivery.

Send the firm's self-assessment template at least a week before the calibration date. Ask the consultant to name three engagements they want considered, the moments they're proudest of, and where they want to grow.

Reach out to each engagement partner and engagement manager the consultant has worked with this cycle. Ask for specifics — named deliverables, named client moments — not generalities. Capture quotes verbatim where useful; calibration runs on evidence, not adjectives.

Pull the goals set at last review — promotion track milestones, a specific skill area (financial modeling, executive presence), or a leverage target. Note progress against each before drafting this cycle's narrative; unmet prior goals are a common source of calibration disagreement.

Pick a mix: one client-facing deck, one analytical model or memo, one internal artifact (RAID log, status report). Sampling beats relying on the consultant's chosen highlights — you see the median work, not just the showcase.

Pull the color review or challenge-session notes from each sampled deliverable. Pattern-match: are the same revision categories coming up across reviewers, or are issues idiosyncratic? Repeated notes on the same weakness signal a development priority.

Look at workstreams with ambiguous scope, multi-stakeholder dependencies, or model-heavy analysis. Was the consultant the single-threaded leader or did the engagement manager have to step in? At senior-consultant and above, independent ownership of a complex workstream is the bar.

Did the consultant earn the right to talk to the executive sponsor directly, or did everything route through the engagement manager? Did the steering committee read out go smoothly? Trust with senior client stakeholders is the leading indicator of promotion to manager.

Especially at manager and senior consultant levels, look at whether work was leveraged appropriately to associates and analysts. A senior who does all the analysis themselves looks productive in time-tracking but is hurting firm leverage and the juniors' development.

Look for moments where scope, timeline, or stakeholder disagreement got tense. Did the consultant raise scope-change conversations cleanly, or let creep accumulate? Did they escalate to the engagement partner at the right moment, not too early and not after the damage was done?

Watch a recorded readout or sit on a live one. Listen for: lede first, recommendation before evidence, comfort with executive interrupt-driven Q&A. Junior consultants typically default to bottom-up structure; the bar at senior level is top-down with the recommendation in the first 90 seconds.

Sample two written deliverables. Are page titles full sentences (action titles), not labels? Does the executive summary stand alone? Are charts annotated with the takeaway, not just the data? Consulting craft norms are concrete — score against them, not against general writing quality.

Ask engagement leads how the consultant ran client interviews. Did they get past the prepared answer to the real story? Could they hold silence? Discovery skill is the most under-evaluated competency at consultant and senior consultant levels.

Pull the consultant's current COI declaration and (for audit-adjacent practices) AICPA/PCAOB independence attestation. Lapsed or out-of-date attestations are a compliance flag regardless of performance — flag any gaps to Engagement Operations the same day.

Check for any incidents this cycle: client data on personal email, files on a personal Dropbox, an unencrypted laptop loss. Even one incident — particularly for healthcare BAA or financial-services engagements — should block a top rating regardless of delivery quality.

Look at the RAID logs and status reports. Did internal deadlines slip silently or were they renegotiated transparently? A consultant who hits 8 of 10 deadlines but flags risks early is stronger than one who hits 10 of 10 by working through weekends without warning.

Did the consultant contribute a new framework, an updated methodology, or a reusable template back to the practice? Beyond consultant level, building firm IP that others use is what separates a senior individual contributor from someone on partner track.

For engagements that closed this cycle, did the consultant author or co-author a sanitized case study and post-mortem? Closeout knowledge capture is consistently undervalued by consultants and consistently valuable to the firm — score it explicitly here so the incentive is visible.

Roll up the section ratings into an overall recommendation. Write a 3-paragraph narrative: what the consultant did this cycle, where they are against role expectations, and the development priority for next cycle. Submit before the calibration session — partners read narratives in advance, not in the room.

Walk the panel — typically the engagement partners and the practice lead — through the narrative. Calibration moves ratings; expect to defend or revise. Capture the final rating and the agreed development priority before the meeting closes; reconstruction after the fact never matches the room.

For a Below-expectations rating, draft a 60-to-90-day PIP with two or three measurable competencies, a named coach, and review checkpoints. Loop HR before the delivery conversation — PIPs without HR alignment create employment-law exposure later.

For a Top-performer recommendation, assemble the promotion packet: calibrated narrative, two named-engagement case writeups, two engagement-partner endorsements, and the new role's expectations the consultant has already been operating against. Submit to the next promotion-committee cycle.

Hold the delivery conversation live (video or in person), not by document drop. Walk the consultant through the narrative, the rating, and the development priority for next cycle. Capture their signed acknowledgment that the review was delivered — the signature is for the record, not for agreement with every detail.