Find Former Employees

I read a blog post recently on a guy who described how he got to marry his wife. He failed to collect her contact details on the first encounter and in a desperate move to find her, he asked Twitter NG to help locate the lady.

After a few activities of likes and retweets, she responded and the rest is history. This is what social media is capable of.

If you can get hold of old-school friends and distant relatives on Facebook and Twitter, getting to find people on LinkedIn should not be rocket science.

LinkedIn is a special platform for business professionals to connect and build relationships. No man is an island.

Even as we need people in our social lives, we cannot rule out the importance of building and maintaining professional networks as well.

 

 

What Is LinkedIn and Why Do People Use It?

Just like any other social media platform, LinkedIn has come to stay. Ever since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has over 575 million users.

This ranks it as the largest professional platform in the world. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to show your professional side and build your career. The world has become very digital and opportunities can be found all over the internet. This will bring me to why anyone would wish to join the platform.

1. To Connect: This is quite obvious. The purpose of social media platforms is to connect with different people all over the world. LinkedIn is no different, however, it is much more than just posting random pictures for likes. People join LinkedIn to meet up with fellow professionals and grow their network. A financial analyst would want to be kept updated in the world of finance, so he needs to connect with other financial experts like himself. Doing this will allow him to see and contribute to financial content which might be of benefit to his career. This also goes for other fields.
2. To Recruit: What if you are not a career individual? You are a business owner and you need capable people that share your ideas and passion and are willing to work for you. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to search for your human capital. There are many ways you can connect to prospective employees. You could easily share a job vacancy on your page and allow the platform to do the rest. You could also connect with people that are open to new opportunities and have a direct conversation with them.
3. To Job Search: In today’s professional world, it is mandatory that every job seeker has a digital presence. Your resume is never complete without a LinkedIn profile. What your profile does is give your potential employer a brief idea about your abilities. This means that your profile must contain every professional thing about you, including your current job role and experiences, educational background, skills, and competencies. Your profile must also have a brief summary of you which should sell the kind of person you are. It is also advisable that you subscribe to the right industries you want to build a career in to get more information on how to grow as a professional. It is important to note that while building your profile, let your skills be relevant to the industry you find yourself in. Your profile picture must also make you look like a prime candidate to the recruiter. Recruiters do not want to waste their time because they are busy people. Going through your profile should be worth it.
4. To Advertise: LinkedIn is a very good platform for you to advertise your goods and services. As a producer, the main aim is to promote your services to potential markets and LinkedIn has provided you with the tools to connect with people and build your brand.

 

 

Why Do You Need to Find Former Employees on LinkedIn?

What if you experience an elevation in your career? You started out as a normal staff in a company and over time, you gain the right experience and get a better offer with a management role, or you decide to start your own personal business?

What if your career has not been as smooth as you anticipated and you are not in your current place of work due to one reason or the other? There might be reasons why you wish to connect with former employees.

1. For Recommendations: You might need your former employees to recommend you for a new job position in their new place of work. If they feel you are capable of that job role, it will be easy for them to recommend you. On the other hand, it could be you that wants to recommend an old work colleague and LinkedIn would be useful for you to keep tabs on their progress.
2. For Business Reasons: You might need the assistance of your previous employees in your business. It could be through advisory services or investment in your enterprise in whatever way they could be of value. It would be easier for you to connect and communicate with them on LinkedIn.
3. Personal Reasons: It could be possible for you to show interest in the welfare and progress of your former employees and work colleagues. LinkedIn would be able to ensure that you stay connected with them.

 

 

How to Find Former Employees on LinkedIn

Looking at the reasons above on why you would wish to search for former employees, there might actually be ways in which you can go about this. You can decide to go on LinkedIn and do a local search if you know the specific names of who you’re looking for.

You can also do advanced searches for them if you need an official list as well. There are third-party websites that are connected to LinkedIn, making it easier for you to navigate your way through LinkedIn functions which could include searching for former employees and work colleagues.

1. Through the LinkedIn Webpage: trying to get information about people on LinkedIn is quite straightforward if you do not need much knowledge about them. What LinkedIn shows you depend on how they set their public profiles. Some LinkedIn users may not want to be publicly displayed so they hide their profile to the public. Other users leave their profiles to only their connections. To find former employees, please follow the steps below.

• Step 1: Log on to your LinkedIn account by inserting your username and password on your login page.
• Step 2: Once you are logged in, go to the search bar at the top corner of your homepage.
• Step 3: Click on the search bar and after a drop-down shows up, click on people.
• Step 4: Search for the names of the employees or the company name where the employees previously worked. You will see options like “People who used to work with…”
• Step 5: Once a list of options presents itself on the search results, choose the name of the person you are searching for.
• Step 6: Try this over again with as many names as possible.

You could also try the advanced people search. This will give you more detailed results without spending much time. How do you go about this?

 

• Step 1: It would be necessary to log on to your LinkedIn account.
• Step 2: Click on the button beside the search bar at the top corner of the homepage. This is the advanced people search option.
• Step 3: When the search page is open, locate the field with the indication ‘company’.
• Step 4: Put down the name of the company where the employees worked in the past. This might be easier if the company is registered on LinkedIn.
• Step 5: Once the name of the company is inserted, there will be a dropdown.
• Step 6: The drop-down contains four categories of employees which include current or past employees, current employees, past employees, and past not current employees.
• Step 7: Click on past employees and wait for the results.

It is important to note that LinkedIn is very particular about sharing private information with people. This means that you need to set your account to private so you can easily conduct a search for your former employees.

Furthermore, this function might be limited to a few users who might be premium account owners. And for you to have a premium account, you must be ready to pay for their upgraded services.

2. Through Third-Party Websites: Some many third-party websites and apps allow us to enjoy some rare features of social media and LinkedIn is not left out of the equation. These third-party apps and websites ensure they make the use of LinkedIn easier for you to use. While using LinkedIn itself might be considered a manual process that takes time and becomes less interesting, third-party websites and apps are more automated.

LiProspect is one of the modern LinkedIn third-party websites currently online and they serve a lot of purposes.

Described as a LinkedIn automation tool with a humanized algorithm, LiProspect provides options like personalized follow-up messages, cloud-based activities, easy response to messaging, detects blacklisted accounts.

You can also automatically view profiles as well as send auto connection requests. Finally, the advanced search option is also available.

It is possible for you to find former employees on LinkedIn through LiProspect by:

 

• Step 1: Signing up on liprospect.com to get started for free. Once this is done, it is recommended that you watch the demo video. The video will tell you everything you need to know about the website.
• Step 2: Once you have signed up, go to the advanced search option on the website.
• Step 3: Search for the name of the company where the list of names you are looking for worked previously.
• Step 4: Click on the drop-down category of past employees.
• Step 5: You have your list of former colleagues.

It is important to note that while using this platform, you would be required to pay for premium services after seven days which means that the 100% free trial would be restricted on the seventh day of signing up.

Another way you can find old employees is through Archive.org. This is a digital archive of everything that goes on online. Over 425 billion websites have been included in the archive.

This website also contains the name of companies and a compilation of data which includes its history and list of employees according to how the company was registered. To find an old colleague, you would need to:

 

• Step 1: Locate the company’s page if it is registered by entering the keyword or URL.
• Step 2: Search for the list of employees on the company information provided.

Lastly, you can use the assistance of Google to find former employees. Anyone registered on LinkedIn will automatically have their details on Google search. All you need is the old employee’s name typed on the google search bar and wait for the results. Once you get the results, you can reach out to him or her.

LinkedIn is invaluable when it comes to maintaining relationships among professionals whether they are your colleagues, employees, or even strangers.

Finding an old colleague or former employee has been made easy due to the advent of technology. It is advised that every organization should have a solid database for their employees.

This will result in keeping safe records of people that have been of service in the past. A digital presence is therefore required not just for professionals alone but for businesses and companies and LinkedIn provides features for that main purpose.

I have explained what LinkedIn is and why it is important for career professionals. There are lots of advantages that come with being on a professional platform such as LinkedIn which I have also pointed out.

There might be lots of reasons which would make you search for former employees on LinkedIn and I have shown you how you can achieve that.

By going through the advanced search on the LinkedIn platform, by using the advanced search on Liprospect and Archive.org, and by using the Google search bar. All these can be possible if the employee is visible on the web. Why not try these steps today and reach out to your former colleagues?

Just like the man who reached out to his partner through the internet, you could also get what you are looking for when you follow the steps above.

Sign up on LinkedIn if you do not have an account, update your profile in an optimized way, and back it up using automated tools like Liprospect. Then you can connect with as many people as you want. Finding employees on LinkedIn just got way better.