Maintaining an updated alumni database is as difficult as collecting alumni details. Your alumni office painstakingly gathers alumni information from various sources and checks it to ensure that it is fresh and accurate. As time passes, this information may become outdated as alumni venture into new professional relations. By the time your institution realizes what has transpired, you will be missing out on engaging the alumni effectively.
Alumni in general use LinkedIn for networking and opportunities. So, they will maintain an updated profile on the site for better visibility and the institutions can leverage this platform to pull updated alumni information for their database. So, here are five easy, efficient ways to track and gather details for your alumni database
1. Value Add-ons for Alumni
Offering additional value-oriented services to alumni is a great way which encourages alumni to willingly share their updated information. They may not share their details with the institution or alumni office if they can’t see the benefits they can avail from it. Providing opportunities such as jobs to alumni will encourage them to give their information.
Not all alumni have the same needs. Understanding their preferences can make things easier for your institution. At Vaave, we have categorized alumni into four different personas that are crucial for wholesome alumni engagement. Here are some ideas on how to engage them using their choices and interests.
For example, Millennials(21 -25-Year-Old Alumni) are the young alumni who might be looking for jobs or internships. Your institution can ask them to share their updated resumes, LinkedIn profile PDFs, and CVs so that you can update them in the alumni database and help them with recruitment as well.
Interested in knowing more about these alumni groupings? Here is an article on the four alumni personas that are pivotal to creating alumni engagement plans!
2. Create Alumni Lists
Your alumni may enter into different industries after graduation. As a result, it becomes harder for the alumni office to keep track of alumni. But, what if you group them based on the industries they are working in which can help track their information? Your school or college can use the existing alumni data to create dedicated alumni indexes that feature aspects like role, experience, skills, and place of work. For example, you can create an Entrepreneurs List, Federal Civil Servants List, Full Stack Developers List, Sales Representatives List, and so on.
To get more of your alumni to share their details, make these lists private and put them on institutions’ websites, LinkedIn & Facebook pages. If new ones wish to join these lists, ask them to share their updated profile information.
Alumni would be eager to be a part of something like this which helps them with networking and connections. They can reconnect with old friends and collaborate with them. Your institution can get updated information and help them mingle with like-minded alumni in one stroke.
3. Obtaining Profile Screenshots & Resumes Through Gamification
This is one of the easiest ways for any institution to get fresh alumni information. Your alumni might be in touch with their friends on networking platforms like LinkedIn. They can also be members of common pages on the same site. Your institution can mobilize active alumni to share the details of their first-degree connections with the institution. Alumni can take screenshots of their connections and share them with you. They can also download LinkedIn profile PDFs from their connections and send them to the institution.
This technique emphasizes collaborative database building and reduces the burden of searching for alumni details. Mobilizing alumni to share their first connection details is easier as they are in touch with almost everyone in their batch and the details will be accurate eliminating the process of verification as LinkedIn does the same while creating the account.
To get more traction, your college can gamify this into campaigns where the alumni reaching their resume-sharing targets will be rewarded. These small acts of recognition will mobilize alumni to work for your purpose.
4. Leveraging Company Chapters
Usually institutions have a brief idea of where the majority of the alumni are working based on their current and past recruiting trends. Your alumni office can start creating company chapters for better connections on Facebook & WhatsApp groups and LinkedIn pages. These are dedicated groups where alumni can form new connections and grow as a community. Chapters can be based on locations, batches, and even roles.
Chapters created by the institution will mobilize alumni to join them. This also means that your institution has updated information about all the alumni in these groups.
For example, let’s assume that a company like Cognizant bulk recruited 500 students from your college. You can create separate chapters based on their location, role and department. You can encourage the alumni to join and appoint active alumni as the group as well. This way, your institution will always have 500 up-to-date alumni information.
5. Recruiters List
Every institution has certain alumni who happen to be recruiters for companies. To provide placements for alumni and students, you should have updated profiles of CXOs, Company HRs, and entrepreneurs who can offer internships as well. The profiles of these top-tier alumni will be easy to find on LinkedIn as they are notable in their respective fields.
Creating a separate list of these potential recruiters can help the institution conduct recruitment and update the alumni database with current resumes. You can put this list on the institution’s website and official pages where the required alumni can reach out to them for opportunities.
Recruiters often prefer hiring from their alma mater as they can easily gauge the candidate’s potential. Training and Placement Officers (TPO) can easily reach out to them to bring placements to the campus. On a side note, alumni can also help the institution by offering placements whenever the market fluctuates. This eliminates the arduous process of cold calling the companies in turbulent times.
In Closing
Having updated alumni information is imperative for effective alumni engagement. Platforms like LinkedIn can provide the right, updated alumni information. Random searching on LinkedIn will not yield results as it is time-consuming and not purpose-oriented. By implementing these smart, time-saving tactics you can not only have an updated alumni database but also provide value to all the stakeholders in the process.
Vaave helps institutions and corporate entities across the globe in realizing the power of alumni and offers strategies for engaging them. We offer a full-fledged alumni management ecosystem that helps you to leverage alumni to its fullest.
Drop in your details at hello@vaave.com & +91 91006 88850, we will get in touch with you at the drop of a hat!