What You Need to Remember: How to Get Ahead
Stop looking for "who does the hiring" and instead find people who have already made the exact career move you want. Change from sending out random messages to carefully planning who you talk to based on their successful career history.
Don't just ask for a referral right away. Instead, ask to learn about the company's inner workings—the "insider secrets." Experts want to know about the real company culture that isn't written down; getting a referral usually happens naturally once you build that connection.
Don't use generic messages. Start your message by mentioning a specific thing you both share—like the same teacher, club, or a challenge you both faced. This changes you from being a "stranger on LinkedIn" to someone who is going through a similar journey.
During your talk, stop asking about "job openings." Start asking about the company's "problems" or "difficult areas." When you understand their issues, you stop being just another candidate and start looking like the answer.
A beginner sends a polite thank-you note; a master sends an update showing how they used the advice. Following up by telling the alum exactly how you put their guidance into action turns a quick chat into a long-term mentoring relationship.
The Loop for Getting Inside Information
The Loop for Getting Inside Information is not just a way to network; it’s your secret edge for information. Most people use their school connection like a clumsy tool to call people and ask for jobs. They waste valuable connections by sending boring, copied messages, which is a bad system that brings few results and makes them look like they aren't serious.
To get better at this, you need to change how you think about using your school ties. The main goal is simple: make contact and check if people are likely to reply, which confirms if a career path is realistic.
But experts turn this into a way to skip past the first hurdles. They use the fact they went to the same school to find out the secret company plans and the unwritten rules of the hiring process, getting around the automated system that reads applications.
At the highest level, this is about making smart long-term connections. You aren't just looking for any job; you are building a secret group of alumni to get information that isn't public and gain power across different companies over time.
To do better than the usual methods, you need to change from someone who just follows steps to someone who checks the whole system.
What Is the LinkedIn Alumni Tool?
The LinkedIn Alumni Tool is a free feature on every LinkedIn account that lets you search graduates from your university by location, employer, and role. It turns a shared educational background into a credibility-backed entry point to professionals who would otherwise receive your message as a cold contact.
The tool covers more than 23,000 colleges and universities worldwide (LinkedIn). That shared school connection changes the dynamic. Alumni are 3 to 5 times more likely to respond to outreach than cold connections with no prior link (Wave Connect, 2025). The broader numbers put this in context: 85% of jobs are filled through networking or referrals rather than open applications, according to Novoresume (2025). Learning how to activate your full university network, not just LinkedIn, compounds these odds further.
Checklist: The Loop for Getting Inside Information
This guide helps you see the difference between Just Asking for Things (What most people do) and Building Your Own Information Circle (The best approach). Use this to see if you are wasting your network contacts or growing your influence among alumni.
| What to Look At | Warning Sign (Normal / Beginner) | Good Sign (Level 3 / Expert) |
|---|---|---|
| How You Measure Success |
Focus on Numbers:
Success means sending lots of connection requests, getting people to accept your messages, and getting immediate job referrals.
|
Focus on Knowledge:
Success means learning things that aren't public—like secret changes to budgets, team turnover, or company culture problems that aren't in the job ad.
|
| Your Contacts and Friendships |
Simple Helpfulness:
You see alumni as one big group of "people who can help." You only talk to them when you need something specific (like a job opening), which makes the contact feel awkward and untrusting.
|
Planning Power Moves:
Your network is a "Secret Council." You keep track of alumni at different companies to understand when markets are changing and find teams that are about to start hiring quickly.
|
| How You Talk to Them |
Asking for Things:
Your messages start with "I need help" or "I want advice," making you seem like a needy person. Using things like "I'd love to pick your brain" makes people want to put up their guard.
|
Testing Ideas:
You start outreach by sharing an observation or something you share from school (like "I noticed a change in [Niche] similar to what [Professor X] taught us"). You offer them an outside view on their industry in exchange for inside context.
|
| Long-term Plan |
Reacting and Leaving:
You only open the LinkedIn Alumni tool when you are trying to leave your current job. This makes your purpose obvious and desperate.
|
Making Money from Information:
You always keep a list of alumni contacts who are warm leads. You see the network as a long-term asset for "Inside Information," where your value is being the central person connecting the best talent in the industry.
|
| Bottom Line |
The Trap:
Treating alumni as a lever to pull when you need something. The request lands, the relationship doesn't.
|
The Approach That Works:
Treating alumni as peers to learn from. Conversations focused on their knowledge, not your job search, are what lead to referrals, introductions, and long-term career advantages.
|
What This Means for You:
- The Main Point: If the "Good Sign" column seems scary, you are probably treating alumni like a service you ask for rather than a valuable resource.
- What to Do Right Now: Stop asking for "referrals." Start asking for "The Rules Nobody Tells You." A referral gets you into the online application system (the black hole); knowing the inside rules (like "The hiring manager only cares about experience with Python legacy changes, even if the job description doesn't mention it") gets you the job offer.
The Basic Level (Starting Out)
At this level, you succeed by Following the Rules. You either look like a real member of the school group or you get rejected as someone just trying to sell something. You must meet these Basic Requirements to even get a response from an alum.
Step 1: Using the School Connection Properly
What to do: Go to your university's official LinkedIn page and click on the "Alumni" section. Use the search filters there to find people by "Where they live" and "Where they work."
Why it works: LinkedIn groups profiles by official school information. If you search generally, you get lots of wrong people. Using the school tab makes sure you are only looking at people officially linked to your school.
Step 2: The Way You Say Hello
What to do: Every message you send must have a personal note (keep it short) that clearly states what you are studying now and that you went to the same school.
Why it works: People ignore connection requests with no message, especially from new people. They look like spam. Research on LinkedIn outreach shows personalized connection requests are accepted up to 58% more often than the blank default (Belkins, 2024). Mentioning the shared school is the simplest personalization signal you have. Give them the "Shared Marker" and they stop treating your request as spam and manually check your profile instead.
Step 3: Making Your Profile Look Right
What to do: Your profile needs a clear picture and a title that shows your school connection (like "[Your Major] Student at [University Name]").
Why it works: Alums look at your profile for just a few seconds before accepting. If you don't have a picture or a clear school link in your title, they think you are fake, and your request gets ignored, which hurts how often people see your future messages. For a deeper look at optimizing your full LinkedIn profile for visibility, that is covered separately.
The Pro Level (Experienced Workers)
At this level, networking is more than just "asking for a favor." You are trying to find out the hidden business problems, political issues, and internal roadblocks at a target company. You are connecting to understand the "company debt" you would be hired to fix.
Business Impact: Checking the Big Picture
Find alumni who are Directors or Heads at rival companies. Talk to them about how they are handling new market pressures or rules. Use these talks to test your own plans and see where their company might be taking too many risks that you’ve already seen fail somewhere else.
How Things Really Run: Checking the "Messy Middle"
Talk to alumni who went through a big company merger or system change at the target company. Ask them about the "speed of making decisions," not just the "culture." You need to know if the company has the right tools to support the big projects you plan to lead.
Talking to Other Departments: Getting the Whole Picture
Don't just talk to alumni in your field. If you are in Product, find an alum in Sales or Finance at that company. Ask them about the issues between their team and your team. This shows you the "internal cost"—how much business gets lost because teams don't work together well.
Mastery: Taking Care of the Institution
At this final step, your goal changes from just getting ahead yourself to making the entire system better. Talking to alumni at this level is like high-level diplomatic work, where being from the same school is a safe place to share sensitive, secret business information and plan for the long term. Your message needs to change from talking about your job duties to explaining how you can help the company keep its stability, avoid risks, and hold onto its market advantage.
Using Your Influence Power
Use LinkedIn's advanced search to find the "Secret Leaders" among alumni. Use your school connection to have high-trust talks about "Strategy Alignment."
Talking About Growth vs. Staying Safe
Adjust your message based on whether the top leaders are focused on "Growth/Buying other companies" or "Defense/Cutting costs." Offer yourself as a trusted person to talk to about handling tough market times, using your shared background as a unique viewpoint.
Planning for the Future and Your Legacy
Talk to senior alumni about keeping the school's name strong and the company healthy for many years. At the same time, find high-potential junior alumni to be your future team members, making yourself look like a leader who cares about lasting influence.
Make Your Process Better: How to Find and Talk to Alumni on LinkedIn with Cruit
For First Impressions
LinkedIn Profile CreatorTurns your resume into a strong online page that instantly makes alumni trust you, using smart technology.
For Confident Outreach
Networking HelperHelps you write messages that are perfectly tailored so you never stare at a blank screen wondering what to say.
For Knowing Where to Go
Career Direction FinderLooks at your skills and suggests different career paths, helping you narrow down which alumni you should really be searching for.
Mastering The Loop for Getting Inside Information
The Loop for Getting Inside Information is not just a way to network; it’s your secret edge for information. Most people use their school connection like a clumsy tool to call people and ask for jobs. They waste valuable connections by sending boring, copied messages, which is a bad system that brings few results and makes them look like they aren't serious.
To get better at this, you need to change how you think about using your school ties. The main goal is simple: make contact and check if people are likely to reply, which confirms if a career path is realistic. However, the professional scales this into gatekeeper bypass. They use the fact they went to the same school to find out the secret company plans and the unwritten rules of the hiring process, getting around the automated system that reads applications. At the highest level, this becomes an exercise in making smart long-term connections. You aren't just looking for any job; you are building a secret group of alumni to get information that isn't public and gain power across different companies over time.
To do better than the usual methods, you need to change from someone who just follows steps to someone who checks the whole system.
How do I ask an alumni for a meeting without seeming like I just want a job?
The Loop for Getting Inside Information fails when you try to hide what you want, but it works well when you change what you are talking about.
Top alumni don't like being "asked for a job" because it feels like a big responsibility. But they do like to confirm that their own career choices were right. If you frame your message as searching for "Inside Information"—specifically how their school background helped them become powerful in the market now—you change the talk from you asking for a favor to you acting like a peer who is checking the strategy.
What should I do if an alumni doesn't reply to my LinkedIn message?
Sometimes people confuse "being persistent" with "being annoying." In this method, not getting a reply just means the person has a low "Reply Likelihood" score.
If an alum doesn't write back, don't follow up with the same request. Instead, wait for a major event (like a company merge, a promotion, or a shared industry change) to reach out again with a useful piece of news. You are building a "Secret Council," not just a contact list; if one person doesn't connect, move to another important person inside that company to keep your network strength safe.
Is it strange to reach out to alumni on LinkedIn you have never personally met?
Actually, this is how the best companies truly get things done.
The Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is meant to filter out junk, but it often filters out important information too. By using your school tie to learn the company's real culture and how decisions are actually made, you are learning how to Get Past the Guards. This isn't cheating the rules; it's getting the clear information needed to show them you are the best solution to their specific problems—something a normal resume can never do.
How do I find alumni on LinkedIn from my university?
Go to your university's official LinkedIn page and click the "Alumni" tab. From there you can filter graduates by where they currently work, their job title, the city they are based in, and the years they attended. You can also go directly to linkedin.com/alumni, and LinkedIn will pull up the alumni tool for your school automatically.
Once you find relevant profiles, check for shared experiences before sending a connection request. A message referencing a specific professor, course, or campus experience gets a much higher reply rate than a generic note. For more ways to use your network, see how LinkedIn groups can surface hiring opportunities beyond alumni outreach.
What should I say in a LinkedIn connection request to an alumni?
Keep it short. One to three sentences is enough. Mention the shared school, say something specific about their career path that caught your attention, and ask a single open question rather than making a request. For example: "Hi [Name], I noticed we both studied at [University]. Your move from [Company A] to leading [Team] at [Company B] is exactly the kind of transition I'm working toward. Would you be open to a quick chat about how you approached that shift?"
Avoid asking for a job, a referral, or a 30-minute call in the first message. You are opening a conversation, not filing an application.
From Asking to Leading
The change from being someone who just "asks for things" to being a "Planner" depends on how you treat your professional contacts.
The person asking for help sees LinkedIn as a place to find jobs and alumni as tools to get what they want. The Planner sees the world using The Loop for Getting Inside Information, knowing that having the same school is a connection that grows in value over time.
Move through each stage, from that first connection request to trusted conversations about company strategy, and your degree becomes more than a line on a resume. It becomes a live channel to market intelligence, hiring signals, and the kind of insight no job board will ever surface. You stop reacting to job ads. You start seeing opportunities before they are posted.
