How to find alumni at a company

Start with your school's alumni directory

Many schools keep an alumni directory or a mentoring platform where alumni have volunteered to talk with students. Harvard's directory, for example, "lists the contact information for alums who have indicated that they're willing to speak with students about their career paths" ¹.

That makes it the best place to start: alumni who signed up to talk with students have already said yes in principle, and a directory often lists contact details, so you can write to them directly. Search it for the company's name. If it lets you filter for alumni who offer to mentor or advise, use that too; Penn's guide notes that its directory can be filtered by "available for mentorship" ⁴.

If you cannot find yours, look on your alumni association's or career center's site, or ask your career center.

Search LinkedIn three ways

There are three ways to search LinkedIn for alumni at one company.

From your school's Alumni tab

Your school's LinkedIn page has an Alumni tab, which LinkedIn describes as a way to "identify alumni in your field and reach out to them" ².

1. Search for your school on LinkedIn and open its page.
2. Open the Alumni tab ².
3. Filter by where they work and choose the company, or type its name into the search box ⁵.
4. Narrow the list by what they do, so you see people in the role you want ⁵.

LinkedIn has removed the option to filter alumni by graduation year there ². To find recent graduates, open profiles and check their education dates.

With people search filters

1. Type the company's name in the search bar, press Enter, and choose People at the top of the results ³.
2. Open All filters. Add the company under Current company and your school under School ³.
3. To narrow it, add a job title under Keywords, or show only 2nd-degree connections to see who you could be introduced to ³.

LinkedIn says its updated search also understands plain-language queries, so you can type something like [role] at [Company] who went to [School] straight into the search bar. Leave out quotation marks, which plain-language search does not support ³.

From the company's page

You can also start from the company. Its LinkedIn page has a People tab that breaks employees down by job title, area of study, skills, and how you are connected to them ⁶. Stanford's career guide describes two routes from a company page: a link to people from your school, or the full employee list with your school added under All filters ⁵.

Check Handshake, if your school uses it

Handshake lets students message fellow students and alumni, and it has its own ways to find them ⁷:

• The People page. Choose People in the left menu, then filter by Employer for the company and by School for your own school. Without the School filter, it lists participating students and alumni from every school. It also has a Grad year filter, which helps you find recent graduates ⁷.
• Job postings. Some postings list people you can message, labeled "Alumni at this company" or, when not enough alumni work there, "Alumni in similar roles" ⁷.

To send or receive these messages, your Handshake profile's privacy setting must be Community ⁷.

Ask the people who already know you

Searches find names. People who know you can point you to the ones a search misses, and introduce you.

• Your career center. Advisers can help you plan how to reach alumni, and its events are another way to meet them ⁸.
• Professors, former managers, family, and friends. Even if they do not work in the field you want, they may know someone who does ⁹.
• Second-degree connections. These are people connected to someone you know on LinkedIn ¹⁰. Harvard's guide suggests paying attention to them, since your shared contact may introduce you ¹.
• Alumni clubs and groups. Harvard's guide points students to alumni clubs and shared-interest groups for their networking events and webinars ¹. If your school has an official alumni group on LinkedIn, join it: LinkedIn counts fellow group members as part of your network ¹⁰.
• Professional associations. They offer structured ways to meet people in an industry, and some have opportunities for students ⁸.

If the company has few alumni

A small company, or one far from your campus, may have only a handful of your alumni, or none. Widen the search:

• Former employees. Use the Past company filter in LinkedIn people search ³. People who left recently can still tell you what the work and the teams were like.
• People who share something else with you. Steve Dalton's job-search method, from The 2-Hour Job Search, ranks a fellow member of an affinity group alongside a fellow alum ¹¹. Search for people from your clubs, programs, and other groups.
• Other schools you attended. If you transferred, studied abroad, or are in a graduate program, run the same searches with that school.
• The same role at similar companies. Open your school's Alumni tab without naming a company, filter by what alumni do, and see where they work. Dalton describes searching alumni databases "to find organizations where people like you hold interesting job titles in interesting locations" ¹¹.
• A Google search. Search for site:linkedin.com/in "[Company]" "[School]". The site: operator limits results to one website, and quotation marks match an exact phrase ¹². It finds only profiles whose owners let search engines show them ¹³, and Google's copy can be out of date, so check the current role on the profile itself.

Choose who to write to first

You do not need to write to everyone you find. Dalton's method starts with two contacts at each of your top five employers, giving priority first to people who do the work you want, then to fellow alumni or members of a group you share, then to people a level or two above where you would start ¹¹. The how-to-ask guide covers what to write to them. Two more things to weigh:

• Recent graduates went through entry-level hiring most recently, so they can tell you how it works now.
• Several views. MIT's career office warns against relying too heavily on the views of one or two people ¹⁴, so plan on several chats.

Keep a simple tracker

A search across ten companies turns up more names than you will remember, so keep a spreadsheet, as career centers suggest ¹¹⁵.

• First, one row per company. List your target companies and mark each Y or N once you know whether anyone there, such as an alum, could help. Dalton's method does this for every employer on the list ¹¹, and it shows you where to dig further.
• Then, one row per person. Note their name, title, company, where you found them, your next step, and its date. Harvard's sample tracker has columns like these ¹.
• After each chat, add anyone they suggest you talk to ¹⁴.

FAQ

What if no alumni work at the company?

Write to people there anyway. A shared school is a good reason to reach out, but not the only one: in Dalton's order for choosing contacts, someone who does the work you want comes before a fellow alum ¹¹. Former employees, people who share a club or program with you, and introductions through second-degree connections all work too.

Is it okay to contact alumni I have never met?

Yes. That is what alumni mentoring platforms are for: the alumni on them signed up to talk with students ¹⁸. Harvard's guide notes that alumni "often find it gratifying to provide assistance to those following in their footsteps" ¹. Keep your request short and specific; the how-to-ask guide has templates.

Why can't I see someone's full LinkedIn profile?

LinkedIn limits some profile fields for members outside your network: people who are not your first-, second-, or third-degree connections, your followers, or fellow members of your LinkedIn groups ¹⁰. Joining your school's alumni group on LinkedIn brings its members into your network ¹⁰. You can also look the person up in your school's directory, or ask a shared connection to introduce you.

Is there a limit to how much I can search on LinkedIn?

Yes, on a free account. LinkedIn limits profile searches and browsing each month, warns you as you get close, and resets the count on the 1st of each month. Searching for someone by name in the top search box does not count, but people searches and viewing profiles on a company's People tab do ¹⁶. Spend your searches on your top companies, and use your school's directory for the rest.

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