Former colleagues can be excellent network connections for sales, recruiting, and different use cases where warm intros can be made.
In the example above:
You worked at Acme, Inc. from April 2019 to January 2022.
Kate, Michelle, and Spencer worked at Acme, Inc. worked there too and overlapped with you during all or some of this time.
As a member of The Swarm, you can run a work overlap import, and the system will find and import them as "work overlap" connections, even if they're not connected on LinkedIn.
You can see their new companies and could reach out to them for intros. Another member of your Swarm could also find their profiles and request an intro to you.
How to import your work overlaps?
Head to "My Connections" and click and "Add Connections".
Click on "Add" next to "Add your work-overlaps".
Enter your LinkedIn profile URL.
Click on "Continue".
Your overlaps will be imported. You can use the Source > Work Overlaps filter to see them.
Where do we get work overlaps from?
We compare the work history of the member running the import, with millions of profiles in our internal and third-party databases. We find work overlaps by looking at the name of the company a person worked at, their position, the date range - when they started and finished.
More things to know about how we select and return results:
The system also imports current work overlaps, in other words current colleagues, working at the same company as the member.
We plan on including details of when at which company the member and the connection overlapped. Currently, you can only see the current job title and company of the connection.
We currently return up to 300 results per company (the results are sorted by how much they overlapped).
If more than 300 overlaps are found, we run a second search with an additional criterium: overlap duration must be at least 3 months, which narrows down the results to people who worked at the same time as the user for at least 3 months, increasing the likelihood of them knowing each other;
If more than 300 overlaps are found again, we then search again with an additional criterium: work location must be the same - this further narrows down the results to people who worked in the same location.
For companies with more than 2,000 employees, we run additional checks by geography, functions, etc. to focus on work overlaps with a higher likelihood of familiarity with the member.