How to reach out to people who left the company for reviews?

Question

I got an offer from a company I’m excited about. I spent a lot of time talking with engineers at the place but their reviews naturally skew positive. The recruiting process was pretty drawn out (3 month process) and in that time frame one of my interviewers left the company for another opportunity. I was wondering if it’s appropriate to reach out to them (and in general people who just left) to get a better take of the company? Personally I want to ask why they left the company, whether they got what was advertised from the company and whether they felt happy with their choice. If so, here’s a draft of the message I’d like to send on Linkedin:

Hi XYZ,

My name is <name> and I interviewed with you at ABC Company back when you were there! I’m happy to share with you that I got the offer and would love to ask you more your recent experience at ABC! Happy to send over a few questions. Looking forward to hearing from you!

And a more general message to people who recently left:

Hi XYZ,

My name is <name> and I recently got an offer at ABC Company. I saw you recently left the company and would love to hear about your experience! Would it be okay to ask a few questions? Happy to send them over for you to answer at your convenience. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Here are the questions I plan to ask:

Why did you leave ABC Company?
Why did you initially join ABC company? Did you get what the company advertised?
In what ways have you grown while working at the company?
What other choices were you thinking about when picking XYZ company and did you make the right choice? Would you recommend picking xyz to a friend?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

You have done a lot of good thinking about what questions to ask these people if they were to respond to you (very thoughtful). Now you need to focus on something even more important: How will you get them to respond to you?

If I were to get your a cold message like yours on LinkedIn from a stranger about my experience at PayPal, Meta, Robinhood, etc, I would definitely not respond. This is because:

These are very intimate, deep questions that take a lot of time to answer
You generally don't want to share this information too readily, especially with strangers, as you never know what will come back to bite you via some crazy leak
I see no incentives in the message

The good news is I think my question asking course can help you a ton crafting this message. If you aren't able to manufacture some sort of incentive/paying it forward, you can definitely bolster the message by placing them more on a pedestal. If you have time, I recommend taking the entire course, but if you're busy, just go through the section about asking for favors: https://www.jointaro.com/course/ask-great-questions-that-get-great-answers-quickly/put-them-on-a-pedestal/

How to reach out to people who left the company for reviews?

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