Find who in your network can refer you or hire you.

The Power of Internal Employee Referrals

A referral is a person inside the company telling the team, through their own referral form, that you are worth a look. That person has a name the recruiter recognizes, which a job board application does not. LinkedIn wrote in March 2018, when it launched its Ask for a Referral button, that members who asked for a referral were four times more likely to hear back from a recruiter at that company. That is LinkedIn’s figure about its own members, not a promise. A referral still needs a resume that fits the job, and the interview is still yours to win.

The hard part is not the message. It is knowing who to ask. Most people have a few hundred LinkedIn connections and have forgotten where half of them work now. This tool reads the list LinkedIn gives you and answers one question: who do I already know at this company, and what should I say to each of them?

How to use the referral and recruiter finder

1. Add your connections. Drop Connections.csv or the .zip from LinkedIn’s data export on the box. No file yet? Press How do I get this file? for the four steps, or Try a sample file to see how it works first.
2. Name the company. Type it the way you would say it: “Google” also finds Google LLC and Alphabet, and “Amazon” finds Amazon Web Services. Add the job you want so the tool can tell who does the same kind of work. Press Find people.
3. Read the three groups. Recruiters, the hiring side and likely referrers, each person with one line on why they can help. Start with the person marked Ask first in each group: the line under the name says why, from what your file shows (the kind of work, how senior the title reads, how long you have been connected). Anyone already in your job tracker shows Messaged or Follow-up due.
4. Press Write messages. Add your name and one reason you fit, or paste your resume once and press Find my best line: the line that shares the most with the job comes first, and every message fills in. Choose Warm, Direct or Formal. Edit any box, then press Copy and send it on LinkedIn yourself.
5. Press Save to job tracker. It keeps track of who you messaged and when: the job, the person and the message go to your job application tracker, with a follow-up date five working days later.

Applying to several companies? On the company step, list them one per line and the tool shows how many people you know at each and who to ask first, with a button that opens that company. Coming from company research or your job tracker, the company and the job arrive filled in. The tool never looks up email addresses and never lists second-degree contacts: it works only from the connections file you give it and from LinkedIn’s own search, which you open yourself.

A worked example: a note to a recruiter

We pressed Try a sample file, typed the company “Northwind” and the job “Frontend Engineer”. The sample lists the company four ways (Northwind Labs Inc., Northwind Labs, “Northwind Labs, LLC” and Northwind), and all five people there were found. Daniel, a Technical Recruiter, went to Recruiters. María, an Engineering Manager, went to the hiring side as someone who leads engineering work. Priya, a Senior Software Engineer, came first among likely referrers because she does the same kind of work; Aisha, Head of Sales, came next as a senior person in another team.

Daniel was marked as a LinkedIn connection already, so there was no invite note to write, only the message. With “Not connected yet” chosen, the Warm note read: “Hi Daniel, I’m interested in the Frontend Engineer role at Northwind. Could I send you a short note about it?” That is far inside the 200-character limit, and the counter under the box shows the exact number as you edit. Adding “cut checkout errors 30% with React” as the reason you fit puts that line into the note too, because it still fits.

The message to Daniel asked one question: is he the right person for this search, or who is? The message to Priya asked whether she would be comfortable referring you and offered a two-line blurb for her referral form. Before sending, swap any general line for one real result: the skills you actually used and what changed. Where you have not typed something, such as your name, the text shows a [bracket], and the page reminds you about it when you press Copy.

How the messages are written

Each message is tailored from the key context you give: the target company, the job, the recipient’s first name and job title, what you share with them, and one line of proof about your own expertise. Nothing else goes in. You can generate messages for as many people as you connect with there and customize each one; your edits to the notes, requests and blurbs stay saved per person. If you have not given a fact, the message keeps a [bracket] for it instead of inventing one, so delete or fill any phrase that is not true for you. Each message signs off with your name, so put it in once and every box updates.

The connection note is the strict one. LinkedIn restricts it to 200 characters, so the tool tries the full version first, then shorter ones, and keeps the longest that fits. The live count turns red over 200, and Shorten trims at a word so the note does not end abruptly. The referral request has no such limit but stays short: one ask, the job link or ID, one proof. The follow-up is shorter again. The forwardable blurb is written in the referrer’s voice, ready to paste into the referral form in their company’s hiring system, such as Workday, Greenhouse or Lever; pasting it takes seconds.

Switching the tone changes the wording, not the facts: Warm adds one friendly line, Direct asks straight away, and Formal drops contractions and ends with “Kind regards”. The same text works as an InMail if you have Premium; add a short subject line. If you want a different voice, Rewrite with AI sends that one message to our AI and puts its version in the box for you to check. Copy each message with one click and send it on LinkedIn yourself.

What to do after they answer

When a contact agrees to refer you, send the forwardable blurb directly, with the job link. Employees usually submit a referral through a form that asks for a short justification; providing a ready-to-paste blurb removes most of that work for them. If they ask for your resume, send the version tailored to this job. A referral still goes through the company’s applicant tracking system (ATS), so the resume has to prove the skills the job asks for.

When someone replies, point the conversation at one next step: a short call, the blurb, or the name of the recruiter who handles the search. Then open the job in the tracker and set the next reminder, so you keep the follow-up on time. Replies that say no are useful too: thank them, and ask who else on the team you could talk to.

Variations by situation

• An ex-coworker. Choose “We worked together” and type the company you shared. They know your work, so it is fine to ask straight for a referral; the message says where you worked together first.
• A peer you have never spoken to. One of your existing 1st-degree connections you have not talked to in years is still a warmer start than a stranger. Ask for their view of the team before you ask for a referral.
• Alumni. Choose “Same school” and type it; the note opens with it. A shared school gives someone a reason to answer a stranger.
• Nobody at the company. Use the 2nd-degree search and ask mutual connections for introductions. An introduction from someone they know is a warmer start than a cold referral request, and the tool writes the introduction request too.
• Students and career changers. Your one proof can be a project, a course result or something you built outside work. Pick the one closest to the job.

Who to ask: referrer, recruiter or hiring manager

The groups come from each person’s job title in your file. Titles with recruiter, talent acquisition, sourcer or HR business partner go to Recruiters: they can tell you who owns the search and where your application stands. Managers, heads, directors, leads and founders (engineers who lead a team, for example) in the same kind of work as your job go to the hiring side: they may be the hiring manager, or sit next to them. Everyone else is a likely referrer, with people who do the same kind of work listed first and long-standing connections higher.

A product manager or an account manager is not counted as a people manager, because those titles are usually not hiring roles. A senior person in another team stays a referrer: their word carries weight even if they do not hire for your job. Titles in the file are what each person typed on LinkedIn, so open the profile before you write; the person may have moved team since.

LinkedIn limits that change how you write the note

LinkedIn's own help page (checked 3 October 2026) says a free member can add a personal message to up to three connection requests per month, each up to 200 characters, while Premium members can personalize every invitation. With so few notes, spend them on the people most likely to help: someone who shares your school or a past employer, or the recruiter named on the job post.

To match your own network, LinkedIn's help explains the export: Me, then Settings & Privacy, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data, choose Connections and request the archive. The file arrives by email. It lists only your first-degree connections, with the company and position each one gave, and shows email addresses only for people who allow it.

The file starts with a few lines of notes from LinkedIn before the real columns: First Name, Last Name, URL, Email Address, Company, Position and Connected On. The tool skips those notes, accepts a copy you re-saved in Excel (with semicolons or tabs, or as Unicode text), repairs names whose accents came out as odd symbols, and reads a plain list with a name and a company column from anywhere else. The company is each person’s current one, so an old colleague who moved on shows at their new employer.

How to find the right person when you know nobody there

Open the company's LinkedIn page and search its People tab for the team name or the job title one level above yours; that is often the hiring manager. Search the same tab for your school or your past employers to find a warmer first contact. Before you write, make sure your own profile backs up the note: a clear headline and recent roles matter, and the LinkedIn profile optimizer checks them. For a longer first message, use the message to a recruiter tool, or the cold email to a recruiter generator when you have an email address.

When the file has nobody at the company, the tool opens Find more people there. It shows companies with a close name in your file (in case LinkedIn lists the company differently), then ready LinkedIn searches: recruiters there, people doing your job, likely hiring managers, alumni of your school and people who share a past employer. They use LinkedIn’s search words: quotes for an exact name, AND, OR and NOT in capitals, as LinkedIn’s Boolean search help describes. Found someone? Add a person you found gives you the same messages, with an invite note first if you are not connected.

Common mistakes when asking for a referral

• Asking a stranger for a referral in the first line. Better: ask for their view of the team, then ask about a referral after they answer.
• No job link or ID. The referrer has to find the job in their own system. Better: paste the link or the ID in the job box; the request and the blurb carry it.
• Attaching a resume to a first message. Better: send the blurb when they say yes, and the resume when they ask for it.
• Writing to five people on one team at once. They talk to each other. Better: one referrer and one recruiter, then a second person only if a week passes in silence.
• A follow-up every two days. Better: one follow-up after about five working days, then move on politely.

What happens to your file and your messages

The connections file is not uploaded. The page reads it in your browser (it is parsed client-side and processed locally, in the tab’s memory) and keeps the list in this browser’s storage so a reload does not lose your place; Forget my file deletes it. Save to job tracker writes the job, the person and the message into the tracker’s storage in this same browser. The optional Rewrite with AI button is different: it sends that one message, with the person’s name, title and company and the reason you fit, to ClapAssist’s AI, and saves what was sent and the answer under this browser’s id. You can see and delete it at My Data.

Frequently Asked Questions