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Looking to connect with alumni from a specific university or your former employer? Whether you're recruiting, fundraising, or expanding your professional network, finding the right alumni can unlock valuable opportunities.
While many universities maintain searchable alumni directories, you might want to try an easier way to access this information at scale.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to find alumni efficiently across platforms, verify their backgrounds, and strategically use that data to fuel hiring, partnerships, or outreach.
What is an alumni network?
An alumni network is a community of former students or employees connected through shared institutional or corporate experience.
Universities or large companies often maintain these networks. They serve as a trusted ecosystem for reconnecting with former peers, exchanging insights, or uncovering new business opportunities.
Unlike professional networks, alumni communities come with a built-in layer of trust through shared history. Whether you studied in the same faculty or worked on the same team, that common ground often translates well in business context.
How to leverage alumni networks
Alumni networks are not only for sharing the nostalgia of the good old days or showing off your current achievements. Here's how you can tap into them for business growth:
1. Recruiting top talent
University or company alumni are among the most qualified candidates you can reach – after all, you both got the same diploma and have similar work experience. These alumni are often pre-vetted, which can accelerate hiring cycles and reduce risk.
2. Sourcing partnerships and deals
Whether you're expanding into a new market or pitching a B2B product, alumni networks can prove to be a welcoming starting point. That shared connection can make the difference between a cold outreach and a meaningful conversation.
3. Building brand advocates
Engaged alumni often become your most credible ambassadors, especially in niche industries. If you're launching a new product, your alumni network can help amplify your message within their circles or offer early feedback rooted in real-world experience.
4. Driving referrals and growth
Whether you’re scaling a SaaS platform or running an investment firm, referrals are gold. Alumni networks often work informally as referral engines, where professionals trust and recommend others with shared backgrounds.
How to find alumni of a university
Finding university alumni doesn’t require insider access—it just takes the right tools. Here are the most reliable methods:
1. Use LinkedIn’s alumni search
Start by visiting the university’s official page on LinkedIn. Click “Alumni” in the navigation bar. From there, you can filter by graduation year, location, company, job title, or keyword. This is especially effective for narrowing down specific profiles, such as “Columbia graduates in product management at Google.”
2. Explore official alumni directories
Many universities host searchable alumni directories on their websites. Some are open-access; others require login credentials. These directories often include career updates, geographic info, and sometimes even contact emails.
3. Check university-run alumni networks
Some institutions run formalized networking platforms. These platforms may include community portals, forums, curated opportunities, and event listings that facilitate direct outreach.
4. Leverage email lists and newsletters
Once you're part of an alumni community, you may gain access to curated job boards, newsletters, or member directories. These resources can surface hidden talent or professional connections not visible on public platforms.
How to find alumni at scale
If you need to find alumni from multiple universities, industries, or companies, it might take days to gather the relevant information.
That's where Coresignal's multi-source employee data comes in.
Coresignal’s multi-source employee data provides a solid foundation for discovering and analyzing alumni from virtually any university or company.
Sourced from public professional networks and enriched across multiple platforms, this dataset includes details like current and past employers, educational background, job titles, skills, and tenure. Whether you're trying to identify former employees of a Fortune 500 firm or track the career paths of graduates from a specific institution, we enable precise filtering and scalable outreach.
It’s especially valuable for organizations building alumni-based products, conducting market intelligence, or sourcing talent with verified experience.
So, interested in checking out the data?
How to find alumni of a company or university
As always, start by registering for a free account:
Start a 14-day free trial
Instantly access millions of multi-source employees, companies, and jobs
Once you register, you will have 400 free Search credits and 200 Collect credits.
After opening the app, navigate to Employee APIs > Employee Playground.
You will see a window that asks you to write a prompt. You might use any of the following prompts, or create your own.
- Write your prompt
Your prompt can be as specific or as generic as you want. Of course, the more specific you can be, the better, but even if you choose broader criteria (e.g., ask to find people who studied in Ivy League universities or worked at Fortune 500 companies), our AI Query Builder will interpret the request to fit your needs best.
For starters, try out these prompt examples:
- Find people who studied at New York University and work in Oura
- Find people who studied in Ivy League universities and work in Oura
- Find people who studied at Tufts University and work in Fortune 500 companies
Keep in mind that each multi-source API request uses 2 Search and 2 Collect credits, but provides the most comprehensive profiles we have.
- Update your request
You can always review the query in the Search request section and adjust the details in there.
- Review the results
In the Collect request section, you can find and review sample profiles that match your query. Each of them will contain a wealth of information, including past experiences, skills, workplace details, and more.
Build an alumni finder AI agent
With hundreds of millions of company, employee, and job records, Coresignal offers you the scale and precision needed to build an effective alumni finder AI agent. Once you're confident with your results in the API playground, you can transition to using these insights at scale via datasets or API integration.
Here's what you can do with our data:
- Select your processing level: Start with base data or opt for clean and multi-source datasets for enriched profiles.
- Use historical data: Track employment trends and alumni movement across time for deeper insights.
- Leverage our APIs: Retrieve targeted records based on search filters, without purchasing full datasets.
- Deploy at scale: Use automated workflows to continuously discover and enrich alumni profiles based on new data updates.
Building an AI-powered alumni tracker is just the beginning. With the right data infrastructure and intelligent design, you can evolve this agent into a broader talent intelligence tool, enriching your recruitment, sales, or competitive intelligence efforts.
Interested in how to find alumni of a university or a company? Let's talk!
Contact our team, and we will provide you with the offer that's right for you.
