1) What level of ongoing training is provided to experienced consultants and managers by the big 4 consultancies?2) Does this tend to be based on immediate project needs or is there a policy of encouraging continuous learning and development?3) A senior manager in a leading consultancy told me recently that they have a training budget but find it difficult to get consultants to attend training courses. Is this the case in all consultancies and why?

Working for one of the Big 4, here's my view: training opportunities are always there, at every level, but are not often taken advantage of. I have rarely seen people trained up for "immediate project needs", as it is often quicker to get someone on board who already knows their stuff. This might vary between groups of course. As for finding it difficult to fill training places, I fear the sad truth of the matter is that most corporate training looks good on paper, but is a waste of time in reality. Perhaps not so much true of specific technical courses. But for softer skills, you'll always learn more on the job than in any classroom.

Accenture do "core ____ school" [analyst, consultant, manager] in Chicago. All new analyst start out with 3 weeks training prior to this core school. If you go down the tech route you will receive courses leading to accredidation in Java, XML, OOP, Rational Rose, .Net and whatever else you are doing.You can generally work towards accredidation professionally in your chosen career eg I'll be going for Chartered Engineer with IEE in IT & Software.One criticism lots of people have is that while you have a training budget in dollars per head per year: you always have to bill your time to something. So the training bill code is used when you're maybe at a conference or receiving a presentation on some new technology.My inside contact, in a technical consultancy role has certainly received lots of specific preparatory training.

I'm ex Deloitte and I'd say that yes they all offer training,and usually sponsorship through accreditation if you can make a case for it. Some of the training is very good, but we don't tend to go on it as we are chasing utilisation numbers, and when we hit them we need to sell, network, reclaim the last shreds of our social lives... a course on coaching from an HR person who doesn't really understand what we do just doesn't seem like a very attractive way to spend time... And we get no brownie points for doing it