Should I state the office preference in the cover letter?

Hi Simone,

if you are sending your application via referrals, it is unlikely your cover will be relevant for an invitation – the decision will be probably based on your CV and the level of the referral only. Moreover, if you don’t receive an offer from office X, normally you cannot apply to any other office till the end of the waiting period, thus mentioning or not the second office would not make a difference. If instead office X is not interested in your profile from the beginning, your application will be moved to office Y and the full recruiting process will be done there.

In general I would suggest not to state the preference for a specific office in the cover if you are considering multiple offices; rather, I would recommend to indicate that some of the reasons you find company ABC attractive is due to the great project pipeline, environment and opportunities of the company, for example in cities like X and Y. In this way you will keep the cover neutral on this topic, and still refer to the different cities interesting for you.

As a last point, keep in mind that consulting companies prefer candidates linked to the area they are applying to, thus it's far more difficult to receive invitations for cities where you do not have strong links, unless you have a very strong referral.

Best,

Francesco