HiCan anyone recommend an employer as it seems that all of my current colleagues are leaving?

Life's pretty good here at PwC PI Consulting. The order books are full, the offices have a buzz again and we're getting loads of experienced hires wanting to balance an excellent organisation with having a family life. Growth looks good for the next few years, and once the IBM non-compete is over, it'll be like PwC Consulting never went away! Get your seat by the window now, 'cos we'll have scores of new people joining over the next few years.

At the risk of asking an obvious question, who are PKF?

Pannell Kerr Forster? Smithy: Do you have much transport-sector experience?

Join one of the accounting firms ?? Are you completely bonkers ?? Just look at what happened to Andersen, and now whats about to happen to KPMG. If you want to do consulting, join a consultancy, not an accounting firm

Hmmmm, as I recall Andersen Consulting personnel moved to either Accenture or Deloitte Consulting - still two of the best brands in the market. Since the Enron and Worldcom fisacos the new legislation regarding liability has, in fact, made a safer world for the Accountancy companies (Limited Liability Partnership - it's a gas!). Even the new accounting regulations have resulted in hugely increased assurance revenues for all of the big 4. Neat eh? You create a problem then get paid millions to sort it out. All in all, the security of working for the consultancy arm of a big 4 is not to be sneezed at. After all, during the next consulting downturn, and there will be one, where are the crutches that support the strat houses? There are none. At a big 4 there is always work available elsewhere in the company, money coming in through the door, that prevents the P45s being handed about willy nilly. Job security (mental and financial) counts for alot. You should try it sometime.

Job security at PwC Consulting??? You must be very new, or very naive, matey. Tell it to the Oracle / SAP practitioners who were culled in their droves just before the IBM takeover. All got the statutory minimum, as they were made compulsorily redundant. Tell it also to the big wave of people who were told by phone call a few days before Christmas 1999 that their face didn’t fit, as the announcement of mass redundancies had been published in the FT that morning, before the Partners got around to informing their staff. What with the current risks to KPMG, with their jolly jape about tax shelters in the US, that could result in the Big 4 becoming the Big 3 very quickly, with the result that the competition authorities will again force them to divest large swathes of their business very rapidly indeed! There is no job security at PwC. Don’t kid yourself.