Referral from intern in field vs. full time in different fielf

stsangg·Sep 13, 2021

Posted in:Advice Job Hunting Tech Career Growth

Hey everybody! I'm looking for some advice here. I'm a junior product designer in Canada looking to apply to IBM, and have 2 referrals. One is from a full time employee in a different field (engineer) and the other is from an intern in the design field. unfortunately I can only use one referral link- which one would carry more weight? Would appreciate any advice, thanks in advance!

teresaman·Sep 13, 2021

My guess would be full time engineer, given there is more of a relationship developed there between engineer and the company, they likely would have a deeper understand of how the company works and have more clarity in determining if you're a great fit. Also, I would assume engineers collaborate with design as well, so the "difference" in field is actually quite little!

stsangg·Sep 13, 2021

Thanks for the insight @teresaman, that’s a great perspective I didn’t consider! Even if I don’t use the design intern’s referral link, I’d still like to somehow leverage the referral opportunity that they’re providing. Do you have any advice on how I could go about doing that?

teresaman·Sep 16, 2021

I would mention that you have another referral either in the cover letter, resume, or application itself! Definitely a good idea to overcommunicate :)