Part of me would love to work for one given the high salaries, but what do they *actually do*? Why do they get so much money? And do you need to be an accountant to work for one?
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A consultant does whatever the customer wants them to do. The cost of a consultant does not quite match the salary of the same consultant though. All the burden of taxes, paid vacation, health care, pensions, personal equipment, training, certifications, periods without contracts, etc. is all on the consultant company. So the difference between hiring a consultant and hiring a salaried person is not that great. What you pay extra goes to the sales team and the shareholders of the consultant company, not so much to the salary of the consultant.
You have consultants in almost any trade. However it is more common in areas where you work in shorter duration projects or where the work does not take full time. It is generally more efficient to have an expert move between companies applying their expertise at all of them rather then staying at one company where their expertise only applies to a small part of their work and the other work require less skills.
As you mention accounting is one of these areas. A company typically does accounting at the end of the month and then a big project once a year. And accountants are highly skilled people with lots of training and certifications and require constant upkeep with new tax rules and regulations. So a single consulting accountant might help out ten businesses all at once. But you also have business consultants who help improve the efficiency of the company when needed, again a highly skilled job which does not take up much time at each company. There are also lots of engineering consultants who work on development projects for various companies, both civil engineers, mechanical engineers and computer engineers. If you can think of a job there are consultants specialising in that job. There are vague lines between consultant companies and temp agencies.
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