Referral email Message

Question

I want to apply for the consulting & I'm thinking of asking for referrals, can someone review my email messag to ask for referrals.

Hi,Hope you are doing good !

I’m a graduate from XYZ University, having professional experience of working with ABC firm in investment banking & private equity domain.

I like the ( ABC MBB firm ) culture of continuous focus for customer excellence and wanted to work with the firm.

I’m enclosing my resume for your reference , if after reviewing it you thinks that I can be a asset to ABC London, you can approach me or can refer the resume to the appropriate HR manager for consideration.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

XYZ

Can someone pls review & gives feedback on the referral message , also what I should add .All suggestions/advise are welcome.

Answer 1

Hi there,

Sorry to be direct, but you definitely need to work on your written communication! It is too casual/colloquial, wordy, and with bad grammar. You are also asking far too much from them. That said, let's show you what good looks like :)

Hello,

I hope you are doing well. I am a graduate from XYZ University with x years experience in investment banking & private equity.

I noticed you work at xx firm and also have [xx shared interest/education/experience to me]. I am drawn to xx firm's xx and was wondering if you might be able to spare some time to answer a few questions I had regarding xx role/firm culture/other excuse.

Thank you in advance and hope to hear back from you.

Regards,

XYZ

Answer 2

Hi there,

I don’t think your current plan will work very well. The reason is, you should not ask for a referral via email – this method will have a very low conversion.

Instead, you should organize a call with a consultant to ask questions and indirectly ask for a referral during the call.

You can find more on the process to follow at the link below:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/hey-everyonehope-all-is-well-3176

Best,

Francesco

Answer 3

Can you provide more context whom this is for? If you are just reaching out randomly on LinkedIn this approach will have a very low hit rate, you will need to work a lot on tailoring your approach.

Answer 4

Terrible grammer. You certainly won't get a referral to any London offices with this level of English.

Answer 5

You have to up your game a lot.

First, not only the overall english quality is poor (bad choice of words), the style is off, and there are grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. A poor written email means that you immediately go to the trash can.

Second, in this email you are not asking for anything. Instead you are giving directions on what the consultant should do. You are telling them to review your resume, and what are the next steps after that. In reality you are asking for a favor, but you write this as if you weren't.

Third, the whole though process is wrong. If your CV is enough to warrant a referral… then what is the purpose of the referral? I mean, if your resume is that outstanding that just by looking at it someone would want to interview you, then you don't really need the referral. If it isn't that good then… well, then you're not getting the referral because the CV is not good enough.

The referral objective is to either compensate consultants that find high potential candidates and convince them to apply. Or to compensate them for screening candidates with less obvious CVs or backgrounds. And how do they do that? Well, I can tell you it is not through CV pre-screening. It is from real life conversations.

So this is what you have to ask for: a conversation. An opportunity for you to show that you stand out from the crowd. And even here, you are not supposed to ask for the referral (that shows poor social skills). And you don't need to. If they think you are great, they will refer you.