I'm in a vaguely similar position, but am not interested in consultancy (having had a brief go and realised I prefer communities to species
).
So...Is it only consultancy you're interested in? - is the main question. It seems (from my somewhat limited experience!) that many of those taken on by consultancies have experience in working for a stat body like natural england/EA first - it certainly helps with understanding the systems and also with local contacts. Not sure what it's like round you, but it's quite scary how well everyone in ecology or environment jobs round here knows each other - and how fast news travels! I also know a lot of people will take random/not good jobs with EA etc as chances of movement within the organisation are good.
If it has to be consultancy then I'd be targetting my volunteering to rack up licenses asap - you must have a local bat group for example. Also make sure you get membership at whatever level possible of IEEM or similar - do the workshops, make the contacts.
Not sure that's very helpful, but good luck!
