One of the most frequent requests from hiring managers is that they would like to see someone with Big 4 experience. The Big 4 represent the largest professional services firms globally, and they are: EY, PwC, Deloitte, and KPMG. Each of these firms is highly selective and provides top-notch consultant training and experience at prestigious clients.
Big 4 consultants frequently have LinkedIn profiles; however, oftentimes they don’t list more information beyond a title and a handful of certifications and skills. Below are some tricks I use to fill in the information gaps.
EY
EY makes its Thought Center Webcasts available to the public. Clicking on the link, you’ll notice the webcasts are divided by Service Lines, Industries & Topics. By selecting a Webcast, you’ll see a brief summary, a link to the session and more often than not, a list of Moderators and Panelists and their bios.
Taking a look at this EY Insurance Webcast, you can scroll down until you see it was moderated by Chad Runchey. His bio states that he is a Senior Manager in the Insurance and Actuarial Advisory Services practice and “a member of the firm’s Retirement Income team… [And] the product manager of Retirement Analytics, a proprietary ruleset used to model retirement risks.”
EY’s bio for Chad on its own page, is a lot more informative than Chad’s bare bones LinkedIn profile. Taking the time to dig through the webcasts, could be well worth your time as there’s a lot of helpful name, title and specialty information that might not be found elsewhere.
PwC
Recently, I Googled someone’s name who is currently at PwC and it returned a hit to a publication she authored (on PwC’s site) as well as her title, email and phone.
I noticed that the link’s URL had “publications” in it, so I tried to see if I could make a viable search string from this. I started with:
site:pwc.com inurl:publications (which yields almost 20,000 results)
From here you can add keywords, email handles and also area codes to help narrow results to find some names.
Below is a string to assist in finding candidates with both digital and program management experience that are based in the Boston office. Please note that I used the 617 area code, because that’s area code for the Boston-based consultants’ offices and office direct dials are listed as contact information in company publications versus mobile numbers.
site:pwc.com inurl:publications “*@us.pwc.com” digital “program management” 617
If you click on the 1st link, for example, scroll down to the end and you’ll see a list of contacts with quite a bit of detail.
If you decide to reach out to either contact, referencing their publication could be a great way to create meaningful outreach.
Deloitte
Through exploring Deloitte’s site, I found that many of its consultants are profiled and you can x-ray the site to search for possible candidates.
Start with site:www2.deloitte.com inurl:profiles
This started string yields about 14,000 results.
One of the first things I noticed is that country codes are referenced in the URL
Klaus Julisch – Deloitte –>www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/profiles/kjulisch.html
Or, in the URL title, or both.
Johan Vlaminckx | Deloitte Belgium | Partner – Accountancy – www2.deloitte.com/be/en/profiles/jovlaminckx.html
Trying to x-ray the site using inurl: or intitle: to narrow by country could be an effective way to narrow your search efforts. If you search:
site:www2.deloitte.com inurl:profiles intitle:UK
You’ll see almost 1,000 results and from there you can add keywords, for example:
site:www2.deloitte.com inurl:profiles intitle:UK SAP
Among the first three results are Keith Blair, Peter Conroy and Malcolm Wilkinson. If you cross-reference them in LinkedIn, both Keith and Peter highlight their SAP experience; however, Malcolm does not. In this case, taking the time to x-ray Deloitte’s internal site could pay off as their employee profiles offer greater insight into their specialties.
KPMG
For KPMG, I like starting on their industries page: http://www.kpmg.com/us/en/industry/Pages/default.aspx
You’ll notice industry list on the left hand side of the page and clicking on one will bring you to the industry’s homepage where the national practice leaders will be listed. In most cases, these national leaders will be too senior & expensive to source; however, use the linked documents to your advantage.
For example, if you’re looking for a candidate with Consumer experience, click on the “Food, Drink & Consumer Goods” link and explore the linked documents. Most documents are peppered with highlighted quotes from KPMG consultants. Even if it’s just a referenced name, it takes no time to cross-reference the name in LinkedIn and explore their connections for possibilities. Google the names too and see what conferences at which they’re speaking and check the listed panelists for co-workers. There are many ways to use these names to your advantage.
Hopefully this information is a good reminder to use the company sites to your advantage. There is so much information buried within their pages; it just takes a little strategic effort to extract it for our sourcing purposes!
