Warm Intros

Use a Past Employer to Warm-Intro Into Roles

You graduated years ago and the campus network feels thin. Your strongest warm path now is people who once badged in at the same company you did, and most of them will help if you make it easy.

Find My Warm Intros →

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.

Example - what you’ll see

Someone who works at your target company

🎓 Same university as you · 💼 Shared past employer

🔥 Strongest

A recruiter at your target company

🎓 Same university as you

🎓 Alumni

✍️ 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:

Short answer: For experienced hires, a shared past employer beats a shared school. Find people who worked at one of your former companies and now work at your target company, then message them leading with the overlap ('we both did time at Acme, I overlapped with the payments team'). Ask for a 15-minute call or a pass of your resume to the hiring manager, not for a job.

Why a past employer beats your alma mater mid-career

A campus program connects you to people who were there the same four years you were. A former employer connects you to everyone who ever worked there, across every year, and the bond is stronger because you did real work together or under the same roof.

For a role aimed at experienced hires, that shared work context also does double duty: it signals you can do the job. 'We both survived the Acme migration' is a credential and an icebreaker at once, which a graduation year never is.

How to work the past-employer path

The move is to find the overlap, then spend your ask cheaply. Make helping you a 30-second favor, not a project.

Map the overlap first. List every company you have worked at, then find current employees of your target company who once worked at any of them. That intersection is your warm list.
Lead with the shared employer, not the ask. Open with the specific team, project, or era you both touched. Reference something concrete so it reads as real, not scraped.
Ask for one small thing. A 15-minute call, a read of your resume, or a name to talk to. Never open with 'can you refer me' before they know you.
Give them the words. Send two sentences they can forward to the hiring manager verbatim, so passing you along costs them almost nothing.

Finding the overlap without hours of digging

The slow part is the search: manually scanning your target company for anyone who shares a former employer with you, then figuring out who is actually reachable. FindWarmIntros does that finding-and-ranking step for you, surfacing the real people at a company you share a past employer or school with and drafting the intro message, so you spend your time on the conversation instead of the lookup.

However you build the list, the principle holds: reach the person you have a genuine thread to, and lead with the thread.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I only overlapped with someone by a few months?

That still counts. Name the specific period and team ('I joined Acme right as your group shipped the new billing system'). A short, honest overlap is warmer than any cold message and gives you a true detail to open with.

Should I mention the shared employer or the role I want first?

The shared employer, always. Establish why you are a real connection before you introduce any ask. The role comes up naturally once they have agreed to talk or to look at your resume.

What if the person left my old company before I arrived?

Then you did not truly overlap, so do not pretend you did. You can still reference the shared company as common ground, but be honest ('we just missed each other at Acme') and keep the ask even smaller.

Is a past-employer intro really better than just applying?

For experienced-hire roles, yes. A warm path gets your resume read by a human who already has a reason to vouch for the work you did together, while a cold application sits in a stack. The intro does not replace the interview, it just gets you into the room.

Keep going

Find My Warm Intros →