Turn an Alum Coffee Chat Into a Banking Referral
Cold applications to Goldman and Morgan Stanley get screened out before a human reads them. The honest path is an alum who already made analyst, and a chat that gives that person an easy reason to refer you.
Find Your Alum →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 investment banking target:
Why an alum beats the application portal
Goldman and Morgan Stanley receive tens of thousands of applications per cycle and lean on resume screens and HireVue before a banker sees your name. An internal referral routes your resume to a recruiter with a note attached, which is the difference between the general pile and a flagged candidate.
An analyst who went to your school has a real reason to help: referral bonuses at both firms pay out if you get hired, and helping a fellow alum costs them a two-minute portal submission. Your job is to be worth that submission, not to convince a stranger you are qualified.
How to run the outreach and the chat
Target first-year and second-year analysts and junior associates, not MDs. They still remember recruiting, they know the current referral link, and they are reachable. Send a short LinkedIn note or email that opens with the shared thread (same school, same club, same prior firm) before any mention of a job.
- Lead with the tie, not the ask. Open with the school or team you share and one specific thing about their path, so the first line proves you did homework and are not mass-messaging.
- Ask for 15 minutes about their group. Request a short call framed around learning what their coverage or product desk actually does, which is easy to grant and shows genuine interest.
- Bring one sharp question. Ask something they alone can answer, like how their group staffs first-years or what surprised them about the desk, so the call feels like a conversation, not an interview.
- Make the referral a 5 minute favor. Near the end, ask what the internal referral process looks like, then send your resume plus a two-line blurb they can paste, so saying yes requires zero writing from them.
Finding the right alum without guesswork
The slow part is figuring out who at Goldman or Morgan Stanley actually shares your school or a past employer and which of them is junior enough to reply. Scrolling LinkedIn by hand mixes MDs, recruiters, and people who left years ago.
FindWarmIntros does that finding-and-ranking part for you: you name the target firm and it surfaces the real people you share a school or past employer with, ranks them by how reachable they are, and drafts a first message that leads with what you share. You still send it and build the relationship, but you skip the hour of guessing who to contact.