Consulting is all about helping clients to optimise the performance of their organisation. Doing so could involve bringing them a fresh perspective on how they operate, working with them on a specific challenge, or contributing particular technical expertise or knowledge drawn from working with a number of different clients across an industry.

Consulting is a great career for any graduate considering entering the commercial world. It enables you to acquire a range of business skills - the ability to analyse data, understand and react to business problems, work with high-level people, and manage projects and teams of staff - through working in an in-depth and hands-on way with a number of different organisations.

Opportunities for graduates

Leading professional services organisation PwC offers a number of different routes in consulting for you to choose from.

You could start your career by building your core skills in Management Consulting. Here you'll experience several different areas of PwC's consulting practice during your first 21 months, after which you'll specialise in either operations, finance, strategy, people and change, risk, technology, project and programme management, or sustainability and climate change.

Or, if you want to specialise straight away, you could join one of four specialist consulting teams as soon as you start:

Strategy Consulting focuses on the key strategic issues businesses face. The advice offered covers everything from competitive landscape and market trends analysis to holistic business strategy creation.

Economic Consulting advises clients in the public and private sectors on complex business and policy issues including investigations and commercial disputes, market reform, and strategies for growth.

Sustainability & Climate Change Consulting helps governments and businesses embed sustainability into their strategies and throughout their organisations, while making the most of the opportunities created by environmental concerns for innovation and growth.

Risk Consulting focuses on establishing risk management as an integral part of clients' management processes and decision-making frameworks, including assisting clients in maintaining enough capital to cover their liabilities, even if a number of extreme risks materialise.