Your LinkedIn connections are one of the most useful things you have in a job search, and you can download them as a simple spreadsheet. It takes a couple of minutes to request, and LinkedIn usually emails it to you shortly afterwards.
How to request your connections
- Sign in to LinkedIn on a computer and click Me (your photo) at the top of the page.
- Choose Settings & Privacy.
- Open Data privacy, then Get a copy of your data.
- Select the option to pick specific data files, then tick Connections.
- Click Request archive. LinkedIn may ask for your password to confirm.
LinkedIn will email you when your file is ready, often within about ten minutes, though it can take longer. Download it from the link in the email, or from the same Get a copy of your data page.
LinkedIn changes its menus from time to time. If the names above look slightly different, search LinkedIn’s help pages for “download your account data”.
What’s in the file
You’ll get a ZIP file containing Connections.csv. For each person, it usually includes:
- first and last name
- their LinkedIn profile address
- their company and position
- the date you connected
- their email address, but only if they’ve allowed their connections to see it, so most rows won’t have one
Company and position are whatever each person last entered, so treat them as a guide. Someone may have moved on since.
Turning a list into a plan
On its own, a spreadsheet of a few hundred or a few thousand names isn’t much help. The value comes from asking: who in here could help with the job I want next?
A quick way to start:
- Sort by company and highlight anyone at the organisations you’d like to work for.
- Search the positions for the role you want, and for the teams that hire it.
- Mark the people you know well, who you could message today without feeling awkward.
- Pick your top five and write to them this week. Our guide on how to ask for an introduction can help with what to say.
Keep your data safe
Your connections file contains other people’s details, so treat it with care. Keep it on your own device, don’t share it, and delete copies you no longer need. Use it for your own job search, not for marketing.
Let Connext Work do the sorting
Upload your ZIP or CSV file to Connext Work and it does the sorting for you. Tell it the job you want, and it ranks your connections by how well placed they are to help, explains why for each person, and suggests what to ask. Your connections stay private to you.
On Pro, you can also connect your LinkedIn account directly, so new connections arrive by themselves and you never need to download the file again.