Finding People to Invite to your LinkedIn Network – Alumni

In our previous post, Three Degrees of LinkedIn, we talked about the layers of your network on LinkedIn. In this post, we take a look at finding people to join your LinkedIn network.

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Finding People to Invite

There are probably lots of interesting people beyond your LinkedIn network that might want to consider linking to — friends you haven’t met yet. You can use various features and techniques to find those kindred souls.

One effective technique is to check out the the list of fellow classmates or alumni that LinkedIn provides under the Contacts selection on the navigation bar.

Select the school you attended to see other LinkedIn members who also went there. If you don’t see schools in this section, add them to your profile.

When you select a school, LinkedIn displays all kinds of information about fellow attendees who are on LinkedIn, as in this following figure.

You can see the geographic distribution of alumni, the total number on LinkedIn and then a listing of those in your network, starting with your first degree contacts. LinkedIn also lets you search LinkedIn Groups to see if there’s an alumni group for you to join.

So even if you don’t know or remember the folks in these lists, you might consider sending them a connection request, saying something like, “We both went to XYZ U at the same time, but I don’t think we knew each other. I thought maybe you’d like to connect and talk about old times.”

It’s even better if you visit their profile first and mention some other common interests in your note. Also, since the member is new, they are less likely to IDK you.

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