European MBA Alumni at US Companies
You studied at INSEAD, LBS, HEC or Bocconi and the roles you want are in the US, where your degree name means less. The honest fix: find the classmates and alumni who already crossed the ocean, because they answer people who share their school.
Find your US alumni →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 - pick your target company:
Why the school tie carries more weight from abroad
A US recruiter may not rank INSEAD or LBS the way they rank a local MBA, but a fellow alum does not need to be sold on your school. They lived it. That shared history is the one credential that travels across the Atlantic without a visa question attached.
Alumni who already made the Europe-to-US move are also your most useful contacts for a second reason: they remember doing it. They know which teams sponsor, which recruiters reply, and which of your worries are real. That makes them far more willing to spend thirty seconds pointing you the right way.
How to find and reach the right alumni
Distance rewards precision. A scattershot blast to fifty people at a US firm gets ignored; two well-aimed notes to alumni who share your exact program get replies.
- Filter by school plus US location. On LinkedIn's alumni tool for your school, set 'Where they live' to the US metro you want, then add the company. This surfaces people with both the tie and the local knowledge.
- Prefer same program and overlapping years. A classmate from your INSEAD December cohort will answer faster than a generic alum from a decade earlier. Narrower overlap means a warmer reply.
- Lead with the shared thing, not the ask. First line names the school and their US move: 'Fellow LBS 2022, saw you moved to the New York office.' Save the referral question for after they reply.
- Send in their time zone. Schedule the note to land at 8am US time, not 8am your time, so it is near the top when they open LinkedIn, not buried under a night of activity.
Let a tool do the finding and ranking
The slow part is the sorting: pulling the alumni list, matching program and year, cross-checking who is actually at the target company now, and figuring out who is worth two of your best-written notes. FindWarmIntros does that finding-and-ranking step for you, surfacing the real people at a US company who share your European school and drafting the opener, so you spend your energy on the conversation instead of the spreadsheet.
You still send the message and you still show up as yourself. The tool just gets you to the short, ranked list of people most likely to reply, which across a nine-hour time difference is most of the battle.