Frequently asked questions

Alumden is a private network of trusted alumni referrals. You join, are placed into a circle for each past employer you list, and you can see - and be seen by - other people who worked at those companies.

The point is not networking in the abstract. It's:

• Building a verified record of your work, vouched for by the people you actually worked with.
• Vouching for colleagues' achievements and writing references, so their next job hunt is easier.
• Surfacing roles posted by people in your circles, where a warm intro from someone shared is plausible.
• Letting recruiters see a credible, work-grounded picture of a candidate without trawling LinkedIn.

Anyone can sign up at alumden.com via a magic-link email. Once signed up, you get into a circle in one of three ways:

1. An invite from someone already on Alumden - accept and you're in.
2. A request to join - pick the circle from the list and click Request. Any current member of that circle can approve.
3. Start a new circle - if your past employer isn't already on Alumden, you can request one during onboarding. An admin reviews and either approves (your circle goes live with you as the first member) or declines.

A circle is a private group of people who worked at the same company. There's one circle per company. When you add a past employer to your profile, you either request to join its existing circle or, if it doesn't exist yet, request to start one.

Circles are how Alumden scopes who sees what. Your record is visible to members of circles you share. Jobs posted to a circle are visible to its members. Auto-imported roles only flow into circles where at least one current employee of the hiring company has signalled they're happy to refer.

A private list of people you'd love to work with again. Click the star on anyone's row in /people or in a circle. Only you see it. The system uses it to send you gentle nudges over time (e.g. “X is in your Dream Team - capture why, even a couple of tags helps”).

On /circles you'll see every active circle you're not in. Click Request to join on one and your request lands in front of the circle's current members. Any single member can approve and you're in.

Requests expire after 30 days if no one approves. You can re-request after that.

Any active member of the circle you're requesting. There's no separate circle-admin role - if you worked at Stripe and you're on Alumden, you can approve other people asking to join the Stripe circle. Admin can also approve from the admin queue.

Yes - in-app notification with a link straight to the circle.

During onboarding, when you type the name of a past employer, Alumden tries to match it to an existing org. If nothing matches, you'll be offered the option to Create a new circle for [Name]. That creates a pending request that an admin reviews.

While it's under review:

• The circle shows on your /circles page in a greyed “Pending review” section.
• No one else can join it because the circle hasn't been created yet - only the org request exists.
• You can continue using the rest of Alumden normally as soon as you're a member of any other circle.

If approved, you get an email and the circle goes live with you as the first member. If declined, you'll receive a personal email from the team explaining why. The pending entry disappears from your /circles list.

You'll be limited to /circles, /settings, /notifications, and your own profile until you're admitted somewhere. The rest of the app needs at least one circle to populate.

Either they haven't joined Alumden yet, or they've joined but haven't added that company to their work history. Invite them.

Removing yourself from your work history removes you from that circle. There's no other path today - you can't be evicted by other members.

Your profile is a verified record of your work. From the top down it shows your activity stats, your character tags and skills, your experience (each role with specific achievements), and your education and languages. The point is that the people you worked with can vouch for and confirm what's on it, so it reads as credible rather than self-asserted.

A vouch is a one-tap confirmation from someone you worked with. Colleagues can vouch for a specific achievement, a whole role, a character tag, a skill, an education entry or a language. The more vouches an item has, the more prominent it is (character tags grow with their vouch count). A vouch is the lightweight signal; references and notes are the written ones.

• A reference is a longer-form, role-level endorsement (“Write a reference”). Client references are shown with a distinct gold treatment.
• A note is a short comment attached to a specific achievement (“Leave a note”).

Both are submitted for your approval and only appear on your record once you approve them.

Character tags come from a curated library grouped into five categories (How they think, How they work with others, How they get things done, How they handle hard moments, Distinctive), and you can add your own in any category. As the owner you pick the tags you'd like vouched for; colleagues vouch for them. Skills work the same way: you search a standard skills taxonomy (based on the European Commission's ESCO classification, used in an adapted form) and can still add your own. Self-declared skills show in grey; once a colleague vouches for one it turns green with a count.

Vouching now lives directly on your verified record rather than as a separate flow. A vouch is the one-tap confirmation described above; references and notes are the written forms. Earlier standalone written vouches were migrated onto the record: written vouches became references on the relevant role, and the tags on them became vouched character tags. Nothing was deleted.

• Vouched: in-app notification. Multiple vouches in a short window are batched into one, and vouches don't trigger email.
• Reference or note submitted: in-app notification linking to your record so you can approve it; references are time-sensitive so we also email.
• Approved: the contributor is told their reference or note was approved. Rejections are silent.

Yes. You can add, edit and delete your own achievements, skills, education and languages, and approve or reject any reference or note before it appears. Vouches and approved references reflect what others said about you, so you remove those by deleting the item they sit on or by messaging us.

On your own record, open a role and choose Ask for a reference, or open an achievement and choose Request a vouch. You can search for a colleague who is already on Alumden (we suggest people from that company), or enter the email of someone who isn't. You'll see a preview of exactly what they'll receive before you send.

Yes, and it is one of the most useful parts. When you request input from someone by email, they get a personal link to a page showing your record and the specific item you asked about. They can vouch for it or write a reference in under a minute, without creating an account. We ask for their name, title and how they know you so the contribution carries weight. The link expires after 14 days.

References and notes (whether from members or non-members) arrive for your approval. Approve and they appear on your record; reject and they're removed quietly, with no notification to the contributor. Vouches are immediate and don't need approval.

From the top of your own record, Import from CV reads a PDF or Word (.docx) CV and pulls out structured achievements (mapped to your roles), education, languages and skills. A LinkedIn “Save to PDF” export works too. You get a review screen to untick or edit anything before it's saved; achievements are saved as drafts you then publish.

It can, if you want. Experiences found in your CV that aren't on your profile are shown with the option to add them to your work history. Companies already on Alumden add you and place you in their circle; companies that don't exist yet are created in a pending state for admin verification before a circle is formed. Nothing is added until you confirm on the review screen.

Yes. The CV contents are sent to our AI provider (Anthropic's Claude) to extract the structured information, and then shown to you for review. It is processed only to produce that output and is not used to train AI models. See Privacy and our Privacy Policy.

Direct LinkedIn enrichment is marked “Soon” and isn't live yet. For now, export your LinkedIn profile to PDF and use Import from CV.

Members of circles you share can see your record. Approved references and notes appear on it; anything pending approval is visible only to you and the person who wrote it. There's no public profile lookup.

You do. Nothing a colleague writes appears until you approve it, and you can reject anything. Vouches are confirmations of items already on your record and show as counts and voucher names.

Only via a personal link you send when you request input from them, which expires after 14 days, or via a recruiter dossier a referrer sends. Both are scoped to specific recipients, and there's no open profile page.

The team uses platform-admin tooling to investigate bugs and quality issues. When you import a CV, its contents are sent to Anthropic's Claude to extract structured information for your review; this only happens when you upload a CV, and it is not used to train AI models. We don't train on your record. Full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Two things, bundled:

1. People in your circles can see you're happy to make introductions, so they'll come to you when they know someone for a role.
2. You give Alumden permission to import publicly listed roles from your current employer into circles you're in.

If you don't want either, leave it off.

You have one or more open roles right now. Same auto-import permission as Open to refer. It also signals to other members that you're a useful person to talk to if they know someone good.

You're actively looking. It shows as a badge on your profile and gives circle members a reason to think of you when they spot a fit.

A daily Vercel cron pulls publicly listed roles from a company's careers page when:

• At least one current employee of that company is on Alumden, AND
• They've ticked Open to refer or Hiring.

Jobs are posted into the circles where those employees are active members. They land alongside manually-posted roles and carry an “auto-imported” badge so it's clear nobody hand-posted them.

Toggle Open to refer and Hiring off in Settings. Already-imported jobs stay live until their 30-day expiry, but no new ones will land.

1. A member of the circle posts a job manually.
2. Auto-import pulls publicly listed roles from a company where at least one circle member is open-to-refer or hiring.
3. An admin manually imports a batch from a company's careers page.

A soft signal - you'd like to be considered. The poster sees you on the candidate list. It's not an application.

On any job card in your circles, click Refer. Pick the person, choose which of your existing vouches for them to attach (or write a new one), and send.

30 days from posting. The poster can extend by another 30 (Edit → Extend) or close early.

We bundle refer-match emails into a single weekly digest (Mondays 09:00 UTC). Per-role emails were too noisy when several roles landed at once. The in-app notification is also a single aggregate.

When a referrer wants to send a candidate's profile to a hiring manager outside Alumden, they generate a dossier link (alumden.com/r/<token>). Hiring managers see the candidate's headline, the referrer's note, and the vouches the candidate has chosen to attach.

Yes. Dossier tokens carry an explicit expiry.

No. Only the vouches the candidate or referrer explicitly attached.

• A reference or note is submitted for your approval (in-app + email, since approvals are time-sensitive).
• A request for input lands for you (in-app; emailed to people who aren't on Alumden).
• Your reference or note was approved by the owner (the contributor is notified).
• Someone expresses interest in a role you posted (in-app + email).
• Refer matches: weekly digest only (Mondays 09:00 UTC).
• Roles for you (open-to-work matches): in-app per-event for fast notifications, email bundled into a weekly digest (Mondays 09:30 UTC).
• People in your circles becoming open to work: weekly digest only (Mondays 09:15 UTC).
• Circle activity: invites accepted, new members.
• Join requests: daily digest when someone wants to join a circle you're in (only fires if there are pending items).
• Org approval: one-off email when your new-circle request is approved.

Vouches don't trigger emails - in-app notification only.

Settings → Notifications. Each category has separate toggles for in-app and email. You can also restrict job-match notifications to people in your Dream Team only.

You're still in that company's circle as an alum, and someone there is happy to refer for that role. Toggle “Show jobs from former employers” off in Settings if you'd rather not.

Settings → Work history. Add, remove, or edit entries. The list drives which circles you belong to.

Records are private to your circles. There's no public URL by default. The only outside view is a personal, expiring link you send when you request input from someone, or a recruiter dossier a referrer sends.

On your own record, use the Owner / Public toggle at the top to see the visitor view.

Email hello@alumden.com. Account deletion currently goes through us so we can confirm and clean up contributions you've made.

Settings → CV upload for the file used by the referrer dossier. Separately, Import from CV on your record reads a CV to populate your achievements, education, languages and skills (see Importing your CV).

Requests auto-expire after 30 days. The circle's current members are nudged daily via email if there are pending requests. You can also reach out to a colleague who's already in the circle.

Admin reviews new-org requests manually. If it's been more than a few business days, email hello@alumden.com.

References and notes appear only after the record owner approves them. Until then they sit in the owner's approval queue. Vouches, by contrast, show immediately.

Import maps achievements to companies on your profile and offers to add ones it doesn't recognise. If a company was skipped, check it wasn't unticked on the review screen, and that its name in the CV is close to the real company name. You can always add it manually in Settings → Work history.

Auto-import requires:

• The company has a careers URL configured on Alumden.
• At least one current employee of the company is on Alumden.
• They've ticked Open to refer or Hiring.
• The role is on the company's public careers page.

If all four are true and you still don't see it, the daily cron may not have run yet.