Just finished PhD (physical science) and during last 18 months was writing up whilst working in and around the defence sector. Considering a career move - never though of consulting but was suggested to me by a friend.Am I of any use to a consultancy firm? What level should I am to go in at? Any useful places to look for a first job?

Are you of any use to a consultancy? All depends on factors such as your attitude, flexibility, applied skills, etc. In and of itself, a PhD and 18 months work experience isn't going to make you a preferred candidate.You could look at firms such as Detica or PA Consulting who do a fair amount of work in and around the defence sector, so your work experience would at least be relevant.If your PhD is directly relevant to a particular client challenge, you might go in as a specialist consultant in that area. As you describe it as physical science, rather than engineering or ops research, that might not be the case. Therefore, you'd be looking at going in as a graduate hire, albeit with the prior work experience potentially helping you to get to grips with the work more quickly, so you can be promoted earlier.

Listen pal, this whole notion of industry expertise is a load of baloney, most of the time -propagated by charlatans of dubious commercia and intellectual repute. Who give a rats-a*se if you have relevant industry experience in which the consultanty does a lot of work in or not: the majority (if not all) of the work is generic PMO, status report production, go and draw me an unintelligible process map type-of-thing where industry experience adds nothing. PhD with 18 months experience, fresh grad with a Batchelors or MSc, you'll all be doing the same work: the industry knowledge and interest keeps you motivated and hungry to do otherwise turgid, montonous and thoroughly nauseating work.I dare say the the majority of you will say my diatribe is incorrect and misrepresents what you do...but if you take a serious and dispassionate look at what you do, you'll find this diagnosis correctZB

Speak for yourself mate :-)

Sure -got no major illusions about the relevance of my work experience, or God forbid the PhD to anyone or anything. I'm treating it as a tool to find a new job (consulting or otherwise).for constructive discussion purposes my PhDs in chemistry, but the defence stuff has had an engineering bias. jack of all trades and master of none, I'd say.Be happy to take a grad starting salary (seeing as I've only just graduated from PhD school) as base salary seems to be what I'm on now.No grand illusions about consulting either - am reasonably used to putting in the hours, and my travel is fairly grim at the minute. My (perhaps naive) feeling is that the public sector (and defence sucks on the public sector tit) is going to dump a shedload of jobs, and consultants are going to be used to force the changes through and / or clear up the inevitable aftermath. Not sure this is the correct solution, but there's certainly precedent. I'm just looking for a small piece of the action......so, in looking to move into the trade, am I being crazy or is it a reasonable step?