(turned into a bit of a rant, but please bear with me. I don't intend to criticize you personally and couldn'T since I don't know what field you are in. But instead I'd like possibly offer you a bit of insight from a different angle)

I have met quite a few in my life. A close friend of my father is a former VP of BCG and a friend of mine started there 3 years ago. Two more people I know from uni doing more specialised consulting, and of course the consultants I meet at works usually for opposing parties. Last but not least, my father who took a great offer for early retirement and now works a bit as a consultant to keep busy.

Well, the young guy at BCG said, they mainly get hired to fire people.
Other people tell me that consultants that are actually hired to solve problems, but do not have real experience either because of different fields of simply being too young, hardly ever help directly. They just get information from the people working at the customer and then sell it back to them. The only advantage is that superior might reevaluate some of the proposals.
Worst is actually the group of consultants, who represent a customer (supposedly lending them expertise) and work on an hourly basis. They just make idiotic demands and make up senseless 'problems', because that means they can check the 'solutions' and write more hours. They often hurt the project more than doing good, cause delays and higher costs while reducing the morale and 'fun' in the project.
It even goes as far as big companies not even making bids on otherwise profitable projects after having met the consultants.

Well, as said above this turned into a bit of a rant, but the reason for that is that I myself an a close friend of mine both considered consulting (he even applied for several of the big names). I my case especially since I am interested in a lots of topics and enjoy solving problems. But knowing the reality of their job, I am convinced that I would not be too happy with it. Intentionally hurting a project? Fuck no!

That said, there are of course consultants that can really help. But it is always those that specialize in a field and work with the customer (e.g. building a proper information management system in an old company) or those like my father who have simply worked in a field for 30 years and can tell younger or newer people how shit works.

For me the conclusion is that it might well be that I work as a consultant in the future, but only when I have at least 15 years of experience and know I can help to make a project run more smoothly or to save one that is about to fail.
But being part of a team to pull something off together is important to me.

How about you?