Pros
1) How to sell yourself - you are trained to be ready with an elevator pitch to sell what you do and who you are every time you have an interaction with another living soul. This sounds brutal but is a Pro because it is expected and taught in the most unashamed and transparent manner which, at least in the companies I've worked for, would've taken yrs to learn. 2) Learn about how to deal with office politics. This is a Pro because of same reason as 1 3) Great for soft skills development such as project management, people management, interpersonal skill 4) Work with some highly intelligent people that you can learn alot from
Cons
1) Burn out quickly. There are those who naturally thrive under a constant pressure, but most burn out quickly by the constant need to prove yourself to get recognition, so there's alot of truth that the average life-span of a consultant is 2yrs 2) Its a Cult. You get used and abused for minimal pay, and yet I still see my colleagues continuing to go back for more when they could leave consulting and go into industry. Its very much like being brainwashed and in a cult, you simply see nohting else. 3) Technical competence (at least in the advisory area, I assume the more technical depts like audit will be required to be more technically adept) is not always present even in senior team leaders. 4) With the above type of culture, naturally there are very big egos who talk a good game but may lack substance.