New Delhi [India], November 3: AI is changing who does what at consulting firms. A new book by a former McKinsey consultant argues that the part AI can’t replace is the part no one trains you for. Gaurav Bhosle’sThe Inner Journey of a Consultant: The Unwritten Transformation Every Consultant Goes Throughis a #1 Amazon Bestseller. It deals with the judgment, nerve and self-awareness that decks and models don’t supply.
The AI-driven shift is showing up first where careers begin: in how many graduates firms hire, and in what they now expect of them from day one. PwC UK cut graduate hiring from 1,500 to 1,300 in 2025, then said in August 2026 that it plans to raise it by about 30%. McKinsey’s North America chair, Eric Kutcher, has said the firm plans to grow its North American workforce by 12% in 2026. Even so, the junior job is changing shape. PwC’s AI assurance leader, Jenn Kosar, told Business Insider: “People are going to walk in the door, almost instantaneously becoming reviewers and supervisors.” That asks new hires to judge work before they have done much of it.
That shift adds pressure to jobs that were already demanding, and the strain is showing well beyond consulting. Gallup’s 2026 global survey found managers report stress more often than individual contributors, 45% against 39%.
Bhosle has seen this from both sides. He spent years as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Accenture Strategy, working on projects across Europe, Africa and Asia. He then founded Being Consultant, a career coaching practice that has since worked with 3,000+ professionals across 50+ countries, over 10,000+ coaching hours.
Bhosle, who still coaches candidates and new consultants every week, says early exits come from a missing guide to the inside of the job. “Getting in is scripted: case books, coaches, prep courses. Staying and thriving isn’t. That gap is why so many good people leave early.” The book is his attempt at that guide. “I wrote the book I wish someone had handed me in my first years,” he said.
So where does that leave the AI question? A deck can be built in minutes now. Walking into a room where the client is angry, and knowing what to ask first, is still a person’s job. The book is written for that moment.
The book has 16 chapters in four sections: Mind, Heart, Soul and Life. The stories come from Bhosle’s diary entries and from people he has coached, and each chapter ends with self-coaching questions. One chapter looks at how capable people get stuck, with overthinking passing for rigor and avoiding a hard conversation passing for diplomacy. Another covers the client room, where “emotion in a meeting is not noise, it’s information,” and the advice is to ask one question before offering one explanation. The last section takes up energy, sleeping on big decisions, and the success that stops feeling like success. It also asks what is enough, a question that stayed with him after someone in a factory town asked him: why should we make more money?
The book is written for MBA students weighing consulting careers and for anyone in their first decade at a firm. Bhosle believes the pressure and self-doubt it describes will be familiar to anyone in a demanding job. Remona Moodley, founder of Master the Toolkit and a former engagement manager at McKinsey, said: “What none of us had was this book. Gaurav names the internal journey every consultant lives but few ever talk about.”
The foreword is by Will Bachman, a former McKinsey consultant in the US, co-founder of Umbrex and host of the Unleashed podcast. “Technical mastery is only ever half the job. The rest is what happens inside you while you’re doing it. That is what this book is about,” he writes.
Published by BookMyStory in October 2026, The Inner Journey of a Consultant is available worldwide on Amazon in hardcover and Kindle.
Gaurav Bhosle(https://beingconsultant.com) is a former McKinsey consultant, an HEC Paris alumnus and an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC). He founded Being Consultant, which helps professionals get into consulting, grow inside it and make the next career move well. The Inner Journey of a Consultant is his first book.
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