Jobs in consultancy are all about trouble-shooting for companies. Often, a small team of consultants will work within a particular firm, for anything from two weeks to a year, to help solve complex business problems that will improve the bottom line.

Most consultants work across multiple industries, offering advice to some of the world's biggest companies in sectors like energy and industrial, consumer and retail, or banking and financial services.

Within financial services, consultants can advise on a whole range of issues, such as developing a growth strategy, portfolio management, enhancing capital ratios or (increasingly) risk management and regulatory solutions, technological improvements and operational and HR matters.

Much of consultants' work tends to deal with process improvement, or business process engineering. This can include process modelling and mapping, Six Sigma, and business process transformation. As noted above, banks often recruit consultants to help implement technological changes, so IT consultants with knowledge of financial services' IT systems such as Murex and Calypso are also in frequent demand.

Consultants for risk and regulatory solutions will need to be able to advise firms on their relationship with the local financial services regulator and to advise, for example, on capital planning and capital efficient structures in light of new regulations specifying increased capital requirements for banks globally.

Consulting careers within the big consultancy firms tend to be hierarchical. Fresh graduate consultants start out as analysts, before moving up to junior (or associate) consultant, consultant, then case team leader, manager, principal and finally partner.

In many cases, consultants have experience of working directly within the field they are consulting in. However, this is not always the case. Many consultants have an MBA, although this is not a prerequisite. In some cases, the larger strategy consulting firms such as Bain & Company, Boston Consulting and McKinsey & Co. will sponsor employees to take an MBA qualification.

Junior consultancy roles can involve a lot of quantitative work, whereas senior roles are focused on client liaison and selling consultancy services. Consultants typically work as part of small teams within clients' offices.

Skills needed to get a job as a consultant in the finance sector include: a prowess for teamwork, an analytical ability and statistical aptitude, ability to grow and maintain client relationships and powerful reasoning skills.