Hi Jacqui,
Linkedin have made a number of changes to their search functions over the years and as a result some of the most useful functionality has been lost. One of the most frustrating changes has been that they’ve removed pretty much all avenues for searching within a group. You can search for a name, but all other searches within the group (such as industry or university) have been lost.
I use Linkedin a lot for our alumni programme and we do have a Linkedin group but I do all of my searching through the main Linkedin search menu (top of page when on your ‘home’ page). By doing a blank search it will take you to a view that has filters on the right hand side. Here you can enter your school in the ‘school’ field under the ‘keywords’ section. You can also filter by location and industry etc.
Once I find people here I send them a request to connect and invite them to the alumni group. The benefit of doing this is that Linkedin’s algorithms seem to recognise the pattern and so our alumni feature more prominently in searches as I become more connected to our network.
I hope that helps. If you want to know anything else just let me know.
Cheers,
Lucy Wilson
Alumni Manager, Kristin School
Auckland
