The skill BCG's North America boss thinks matters more in the AI era

Mel Wolfgang, BCG's North America regional chair, wants consultants who can combine technical proficiency with critical-thinking skills.

Courtesy of BCG BCG is accelerating hiring of both technical talent and traditional consultants .

Mel Wolfgang, the firm's North America chair, wants consultants to keep building technical skills.

At the same time, he said, critical thinking and judgment remain essential.

At Boston Consulting Group, consultants of the future might look a lot like those of the past: generalists with business acumen.

The difference, said BCG veteran Mel Wolfgang, is that the firm increasingly sees its consultants developing some of the technical capabilities once concentrated among specialists in areas such as IT architecture and software development .

Wolfgang got a better sense of that shift when he took over as North America chair in May.

He asked how many of BCG's traditional consulting staff had skill sets similar to those of its technical employees.

What Wolfgang found surprised him.

"I've actually kind of got double the workforce that I thought I had, and I started to really categorize what people know," he said.

Nearly as many people with traditional consulting backgrounds — including, as Wolfgang put it, "the English lit major with an MBA" — had developed skills that approximated those of BCG's technical hires.

BCG gauged those skills through tests and employees' demonstrated technical work on the job.

Hiring is accelerating The findings come, Wolfgang said, as the firm is accelerating its hiring of both technical talent and business generalists, who have long populated the consulting industry.

He said he wants people who combine technical proficiency with the critical-thinking skills BCG has traditionally prized.