A consultant's work depends largely on one thing: what his or her client wants. "If a company is thinking about marketing a product, they often come to us for a sense of how they will stack up against the competition," says Ray Kurkjy, senior consultant at ChemSystems in Tarrytown, NY. To help his client, Kurkjy uses his chemical training, industry knowledge, and market contacts to study the viability of a client's plans. "People come to us because they can't ask the questions themselves. As consultants, we know the business, but we are not in the business ourselves. Through consultants, the necessary information for assessing the marketplace can be gathered without revealing the client's plans."