Turn Your Alumni Directory Into Warm Intros
Your school directory has thousands of names and gives you nothing until you message someone. The honest fix is a repeatable system that filters for the few alumni who can actually open a door and gives them a 30-second way to say yes.
Find your alumni intros →Free · No sign-up · See results in ~10 seconds
✍️ 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 directory sits unused
A directory is optimized for storage, not action. It shows you 4,000 alumni sorted by grad year, which is the opposite of what you need: the 12 people who are at a company you want and have a reason to reply to you specifically.
The gap is not effort, it is filtering. Students scroll, feel overwhelmed by names with no context, save a spreadsheet they never open again, and go back to submitting applications into the void. The list feels like progress. It is not, until a message leaves your outbox.
The filters that turn names into targets
Do not message alumni because they went to your school. That thread alone is weak; thousands of people share it. Message the ones who share a second, more specific thread, because that is what makes them stop and read.
- Company and role match. Filter for alumni currently at your 8 to 10 target firms, ideally on or next to the team you want, so your ask maps to something they can actually influence.
- A second shared thread. Same concentration, same club, a prior employer, a shared hometown, or the same recruiting path. Two overlaps turns a cold name into someone with a reason to help.
- Reachable and recent. Prioritize people who joined in the last 2 to 3 years. They remember the recruiting grind, still feel the alumni tie, and are junior enough to answer their own messages.
- Able to say yes fast. Favor people who can forward you internally or share a referral link over senior alumni who will need three follow-ups to reply at all.
How FindWarmIntros does the filtering for you
The filtering step is where most students stall, because a raw directory will not tell you who at a company also shares your program, club, or old job. FindWarmIntros is a free tool that does exactly that part: you name a target company, and it finds the real people there you overlap with, ranks them by how strong the shared thread is, and drafts a first message that leads with what you have in common instead of the ask. You still pick who to contact and send it yourself, but you skip the hours of cross-referencing a static list and get straight to the few names worth messaging this week.
The message that gets a yes
A warm intro fails when the ask is vague or expensive to answer. Open with the shared thread in the first line so they know why you, specifically, are writing. Then name one concrete thing: a specific role, a team, or a single question about their group.
Make helping you cost 30 seconds. Ask a yes or no question (Would you be open to a 15-minute call? or Could you point me to who owns campus hiring for X?) instead of a paragraph that demands they draft your whole path. End with an easy out so a no still feels friendly, and keep a simple tracker so you follow up once after 5 business days.