How the KPMG Referral Program Works
A KPMG job posting gets hundreds of cold resumes and a handful of referrals, and the two piles are not read the same way. The honest fix is not a better resume, it is one current employee willing to submit you.
Find your KPMG referral →Free · No sign-up · See results in ~10 seconds
A plain LinkedIn search buries the people who would actually help you.
It ranks by prominence, so the most-followed, most-messaged names sit on top. FindWarmIntros surfaces the coworkers who share your school or a past employer - the people most likely to reply - and hands you a ready-to-send intro.
✍️ Ready-to-send intro“Hi - we both studied at [your school]. I’d love to hear about your path to a company you are targeting before I apply…”
… plus everyone else in your network who can put in a good word.
See who can refer you in - start with KPMG:
What a KPMG referral actually does for you
When a KPMG employee refers you, they log into an internal referral tool and attach your resume to a specific requisition or the general pipeline. That submission tags you as employee-referred, which is a status a recruiter can filter for. It does not guarantee an interview, but it moves your resume out of the pile that most cold applicants sit in and puts a name behind it.
The employee usually becomes eligible for a referral bonus only after you are hired and stay for a set period, so their incentive is to refer people they believe will actually land and last. That is why a vague ask from a stranger rarely works, and a specific ask from someone who shares your background often does.
How to get referred without knowing anyone yet
You do not need a friend inside KPMG. You need one employee who has a real reason to say yes, and a message that makes saying yes cost them almost nothing.
- Lead with what you share. Open with the school, past firm, or CPA-track you have in common, not the request. A shared alma mater or a former employer gives the person a reason to reply before they know anything else about you.
- Match the person to the practice. Ask someone in the function you want (Audit, Tax, Advisory, or a specific industry group), because they can refer you into the right requisition and a recruiter trusts a referral from the relevant team.
- Hand them a paste-ready blurb. Send two lines they can drop straight into the referral tool: the exact role and req number, and one sentence on why you fit. Do not make them write anything.
- Ask for the submission, not a coffee chat. Be direct that you are asking them to submit you through the Employee Referral Program. A clear, small ask gets answered more often than a vague networking note.
Finding the right person to ask
The hard part is not the message, it is finding a KPMG employee who genuinely overlaps with you and works in the practice you are targeting. Scrolling LinkedIn by hand, you tend to find senior partners who never reply, not the manager two years ahead of you who actually remembers the shared professor.
This is the finding-and-ranking step FindWarmIntros does for you. It takes your school and past employers, searches the target company, and surfaces the real people at KPMG who share a path with you, ranked by how reachable they are, then drafts the warm intro so your first message already leads with the thing you have in common. You still send it and build the relationship, the tool just removes the hour of guessing who to ask.