Hi there,

Usually you can be “officially” referred by one person only in a company. In some countries, the person referring you gets a bonus if you are hired, so they have an incentive to refer good candidates and the order of referral matters in that sense.

In terms of how you could benefit from a second referral:

• You can still be referred “informally” by others. They could drop your name to HR and this may increase the likelihood they call you. You should be transparent with the consultants you talk to on the fact someone already officially referred you.
• I would not start the application process for two different offices/positions for Strategy& for the time being. However, if you prefer you may keep the second referral on hold and “activate” it if you are not successful with your first attempt for an office in a different country. I would wait at least 6 months after the rejection to do so and would be transparent on the previous rejection.
• As mentioned by Ian, if you are interested in both S& and PwC in some countries you may have two different application processes, although from your post it seems both consultants are working at Strategy&.

Hope this helps,

Francesco

Hi there,

My suggestion would be to keep the 2nd referral offer in the back-pocket for now. However, there's various options:

• You could have 2x referrals for 1 position (1x official in system/ 1x unofficial glowing recommendation letter to HR) and this can give your application more weight → Good option
• You shouldn't apply for 2x very different positions in different countries with 2x separate referrals since this just creates too much confusion from the get-go and makes it harder for you to tell a convincing story as to your motivation (you will essentially have 2x conflicting stories) → Not a good option
• You could apply for position #1 with 1x referral and depending on the outcome, you can give it another shot for position #2 with 1x referral from your back pocket (assuming you're not banned from applying after an unsuccessful application) → Best option

Hope this helps a bit! Best of luck!

Hi there,

If you're an experienced hire you *should* be able to use one for strategy& and one for PwC (this doesn't apply to MBA recruiting though). 

I would double check with this 2nd person just to see. Let them know you just got a strat& referral but flag interest in x role at PwC. Ask them if it would be a problem to apply to that role using their referral.

Well done on what sounds like great networking!

Hi there, 

Fun question. In reality, it really depends on how integrated the tracking system for referrals is across offices. Usually, it's not that well integrated and it's rather siloed. I'd expect for Strategy& that if you get a referral for a role in one country and another in one country they might not be able to see it. Still, I'd go sequentially through them and not both at the same time. Then maybe you don't even have to worry about this problem in the first place. 

For Strategy& / PwC, if the referrals are from different offices, it is highly likely that the referral process is not integrated and that not only you can, but actually that you HAVE TO use the second referral for the other country.

Big 4 usually don't work as “one firm”.