There are many job vacancies which are filled through reference and they are not even advertised on the company portal or news paper on any other media. This is one place where the alumni can help in recruitment and internships. If the networking is not good we can miss out on these opportunities.
It has been seen that many times the alumni directly call the juniors for interviews in their companies. At the college or university level we should not miss the opportunity of building the alumni network and it is never late to start on networking with the alumni’s.
One of the best network is LinkedIn and every college / University should have a LinkedIn Group dedicated to Alumni. The college admin of the Group should try to find the alumni’s and make them member of the group. Here we can have discussions and post jobs as well as request Alumni’s for opportunities for their juniors in their network.
In this way we can find alumni who are working in the target field from the data base and can approach them.
There are also other social media channels like Facebook, twitter because some use these different channels so we should follow all social media channels for better chance of networking. With twitter you get an added advantage that we come to know what other alumni’s are following. We can also come to know on what topics the alumni are interested.
The colleges should organize Alumni Meets and other events in which alumni are invited and have the maximum interaction of the students with them so that the alumni can directly contact any student if there is an opportunity in their company for the profile their junior is looking for.
It is very important to follow up with alumni we come in contact with. This helps in keeping the communication channel open which can help in chance of getting placement opportunities.
Also would like to state that there have been researches which have proved the value of keeping in touch with the alumni’s. Many of the alumni’s prefer recruiting candidates from their colleges/ universities. If you take examples of IIT’s or Medical Colleges many Alumni’s give big donations to their colleges because they say this is the place which is very important in their life because they helped in getting them their first job.
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