In the course of my software consulting business, last year I helped a current client of mine create a Request for Proposal to see if they wanted to step up to a larger application platform. One of the 3 final candidates out of a field of about 30 was SAP. That is to say, an SAP consulting group, because SAP is huge and highly customizable, and it requires a consulting company to customize the software, implement it and train the staff of the company buying it. You are probably hoping to get a job at a firm like that.
My impression was that although each consultant had good technical knowledge of the application (or the particular part of the app to which they were assigned), one of their main strengths was to speak in current "consultant-ese". My client's staff was completely baffled, because the consultants appeared to be incapable of explaining anything in plain English with real-world examples. When I attempted to translate or find a common ground, each time we were told that it wasn't that simple, but that if we put ourselves in the hands of the consulting group, the outcome would be most excellent. The estimate for the consulting group's total implementation fee (with a one year timeline) was 4 times the cost of the software and hardware combined.
Considering that, after two live presentations of 6 hours each, my client still didn't know the exact nature of the services for which they would be contracting and had only a vague notion of how the software worked, the client declined to purchase SAP. A similar experience occurred with an Oracle consulting group.
To address your question, if you are technically capable (which I assume you are), and if you're willing to cloak your communications with 4 syllable buzzwords, with the vocabulary shifting over time as new terms are adopted and old ones are discarded, you'll probably fit right in.
I have no idea whether this helps, but it's a true story.
JK  | 
06-11-2007, 08:22 PM
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