Find a Warm Path Into OpenAI or Anthropic
You do not need a PhD or a NeurIPS paper to get a real person at a top AI lab to reply. You need one shared thread and a request that costs them 30 seconds.
Find My Warm Path →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 a tech target:
Why pedigree is the wrong filter
Top AI labs are not only research orgs. OpenAI and Anthropic hire product engineers, data annotators, recruiters, security staff, GTM, and operations people, and most of them never published a paper either. Those are the people most likely to share your school or a past employer, and they sit next to the hiring managers you actually want.
So stop trying to match the pedigree of a research scientist. Match a human instead. One alum in a non-research role who can forward your note is worth more than ten famous researchers who will never see it.
How to find the shared thread
The overlap already exists in your history. Your job is to surface the specific person at the lab who shares it, then pick the single warmest one.
- Mine your school. On LinkedIn, open your university page, click Alumni, and filter by 'where they work' to OpenAI or Anthropic. Note the exact program or grad year you share, because that is your opening line.
- Mine every past employer. Do the same from each company you have worked at, including internships and contract roles. An ex-colleague who moved to the lab is the strongest thread of all.
- Widen to adjacent overlaps. Same hometown, same bootcamp, same open-source project, same volunteer org. Any true, specific shared thing beats a cold hello.
- Rank by reachability, not seniority. A recruiter or a mid-level engineer who shares your major will reply far more often than a VP who shares nothing.
Let a tool do the finding and ranking
Doing this by hand across five past employers and a university is slow, and it is easy to miss the one person who actually overlaps. FindWarmIntros does the finding-and-ranking part for you: you name the target lab and it surfaces the real people there who share your school or a former employer, ranked by how connectable they are, and drafts a warm intro you can edit.
Whether you use a tool or a spreadsheet, the principle is the same. Reach the closest overlap first, and make helping you almost effortless.
Write the message so replying costs 30 seconds
Open with the shared thread in the first line, not your job hunt. Something like 'Fellow Berkeley EECS grad here' earns a read before you have asked for anything.
Then ask for one small, concrete thing: a five-minute read of your resume, the name of the hiring manager for a specific req, or whether they would forward your note internally. Never open with 'can you refer me.' Make the yes cheap and the reply will come.