If you don't want to miss any superb career opportunities that appear in a HR department of one of the world's leading Consulting firms, then consider registering your CV with them. You might be actively looking out for your next opportunity or just passively interested in opportunities that could catapult your career into a new an exciting phase. Or are you ready to go one better and become an independent consultant?

But if you have the time and opportunity to choose from more than one opportunity and other top consulting firms, which would you go for?

Consulting Magazine surveyed 13,000 consultants representing 205 firms. Questions were grouped into six sectors:

- Compensation
- Work/life balance
- Career development
- Job experience
- Firm leadership
- Firm culture

The winners of the best firm to work for were:

1) Bain & Company
2) The Boston Consulting Group
3) North Highland
4) Point B
5) Booz & Company
6) Alvares & Marsal
7) Milliman
8) A.T. Kearney
9) Monitor Group
10) Kurt Salmon Associates

Other firms you might consider working for include:

Abt Associates
Accenture
AT Kearney
Avanade
Bain & Company
BearingPoint
Booz Allen Hamilton
The Boston Consulting Group
Deloitte
Development Dimensions International
Diamond Mgmt. & Technology Consultants
First Consulting Group
Hitachi Consulting
Huron Consulting Group
IBM
PRTM
ICF Consulting
Infosys Consulting
Kurt Salmon Associates
McKinsey & Company
Mercer Management Consulting
Mercer Oliver Wyman
Monitor Group
Navigant Consulting
PA Consulting
Point B
Proudfoot Consulting
Robbins-Gioia
Sapient
Tata Consultancy Services
Towers Perrin
ZS Associates

Working for one of these firms can provide you with excellent experience on being a consultant. But remember that to a large extent, when working for one of these firms, you are what some call 'wrapped up in cotton wool' and allowed to simply go out and consult with guaranteed income every month.

Being an independent consultant is far more demanding as you have to take responsibility for all the aspects of running a business in addition to providing consulting services to clients. But once successful, you can enjoy far more freedom, independence and a higher income than many employed consultants.

Which type of consultant do you want to be? If you possess some entrepreneurial spirit, the excitement, rewards and satisfaction of helping others through your own consulting business might be far more attractive than just being another employee in large consulting form.

If you want to become a successful independent consultant and you have the courage and ability to succeed without the corporate cotton wool that employees are wrapped in, you need to learn how you can win a pipeline of high paying clients and earn the high six figure income that you probably want.

It is certainly not for the faint hearted because knowing your subject is simply not enough. You need to know how to operate a complete business and then go and and satisfy your clients.

Marketing, finance, account management, project management and leadership are just some of the areas that you need to become an expert in when running your own consulting business.

Which type of consultant do you want to be?