Unfortunately the answer is - it depends.For someone who has no experience of consulting, the first consulting assignment can be a way of finding out whether they have the skills that are required of a good consultant - which may not necessarily have been developed or tested in industry positions. Some of these are the ability to work in unstructured situations, self sufficiency, intensive travel and a lot of variety. Experience in industry will definitely give you problem solving ability and domain expertise but it can be hard to assess if those consulting specific skills have been developed.So if you go try to go into consulting that would explain some of the reluctance of some companies to take on direct hires - they would have no way to measure your consulting specific skills.Once you get in you will have to give it some time to see if it is for you or not. The consulting lifestyle with the constant travel can be harder on a 42 year old than it would for a fresh graduate as family considerations are often involved and this can be a drastic change from an industry lifestyle in some cases. if you enjoy it, it is unlikely that you easily fit in to the traditional consulting career path but I suspect a close fit may be as a domain specific "expert". A lot fo consultancies these days are well aware that not everyone getting into consulting wants to dedicate their career to becoming partner so it is quite possible to do well as an expert. However, whether it will be a long term career that works for you is something you will have to assess when you get in.
