Alumni networks: Alma matters

“You become an alum on your first day at school and you stay an alum for life,” insists Marguerite Gallant, the executive director of HEC Alumni, a network for graduates of HEC Business School, one of the grandes écoles, France’s answer to the Ivy League. More than just a list of people likely to attend a college reunion, an alumni network – reserved for former students and graduates of the same university – is a deep reservoir of opportunity all throughout your professional career.   

The Alumni of the Ivy League network, for example, has over 118,000 members. This sophisticated umbrella group for graduates of the US’ most prestigious universities – including Princeton, Harvard, MIT and Stanford – in addition to Oxford and Cambridge, has many sub-networks dedicated to career advancement, including Ivy League Jobs & Recruiting, Ivy League Business Opportunities and Ivy League Startups & Entrepreneurs, with each having its own offshoots across numerous sectors and professions. It is a trusted recruiting pipeline for a host of leading companies, such as Goldman Sachs, LVMH, IBM and Sony. What’s more, with Ivy League groups spread all over the world, alumni have pre-existing connections with professionals based in a new country, should they ever move to one. All very impressive, and the good news is you don’t have to have gone to an elite seat of higher learning to take advantage of an alumni network.

By their very nature, these networks create a strong sense of belonging, as well as relationships based on trust, which can encourage the transmission of valuable information for developing professional connections. Baptiste Massot, director of development at AlumnForce, a web and mobile solution specializing in the creation and management of private networks for universities and businesses, remarks: “compared with social networks like LinkedIn, we have around 25% more data, such as phone numbers, which are transmitted within our platforms.”

There when you need it
One of the advantages of an alumni network is its ability to meet the needs of members at every stage of their professional lives. “Graduates between the ages of 18 and 25 are quite active on the network,” and there is a “real spike in activity among those in their late twenties,” as this is a time when many people change jobs after a first professional experience, explains Massot. After a slight drop in use among graduates in their 30s – this tends to be a period when people start a family and so prioritize stable employment – alumni networks witness a strong revival of interest among workers aged around 40, he adds. “This is a time when people are often thinking about their next career move.”

In addition to making it easier to find a job, alumni networks also offer content that helps members sharpen their business skills and master new technology, in order to stay one step ahead of the competition. They also host meetups and events featuring talks from distinguished alumni on a host of relevant topics, such as competitiveness, AI, finance and climate. With 80,000 members from 130 countries, HEC Alumni is no exception. Through its HEC Life Project, the network organizes around 100 events a year, as well as some 50 business-oriented clubs: a luxury club, a blockchain club, a marketing club, a finance hub, an entrepreneurship hub, etc.  

Maria Gallo, author of The Alumni Way: Building Lifelong Value from Your University Investment, who describes such groups as places “of lifelong networking and solutions” stresses that when “we embrace our alumni identity in its many forms, we extend that narrow boundary that we set around ourselves” in the professional world. Gallo contends that, “as an active alum, we are part of a symbiotic relationship, give and take, so fellow alum might be come your next customers, clients or employees, or you may become theirs. They may contact you when they move to a new city or country, or you may contact them. Ask yourself, what can my alumni community offer me, and what can I offer in return?”

One of the advantages of an alumni network is its ability to meet the needs of members at every stage of their professional lives

Those that heed this advice are often older alumni, many vastly experienced and keen to act as mentors to the next generation, notes Massot: “We see a spike in interest in alumni networks at around 57-60 years of age, with some members keen to share the knowledge they have accrued by running theme-based clubs.”

This does not mean that people in the third phase of their careers (50 to retirement) can only use alumni networks to pass on wisdom to younger professionals. They can be a valuable resource for those planning a late flourish in their professional lives at an age where they can feel as though their career options are dwindling by the year. And just as women’s networks can train female professionals how to spot and overcome sexism, an alumni network can do the same for older men and women confronted by ageism in the workplace.

Developing brand you
When graduates leave the academic world for the private sector, few excel at public-speaking or putting themselves forward – skills that are nevertheless vital for advancing in the corporate world. Alumni networking events, which bring together scores of receptive and supportive strangers, are an ideal opportunity to practice your presentation skills or become more at ease talking about yourself and your professional qualities in front of a group of people. Many alumni networks offer workshops dedicated to the development of soft skills, and Baptiste Massot also stresses the importance of “being active within your network, in order to showcase knowledge and capabilities.”

The strength of alumni networks also lies in their access to a “hidden” recruitment market, full of plum job offers, as opposed to the anonymous offers published on LinkedIn or job boards. “A large proportion of the job offers posted on our alumni network platforms are not posted anywhere else,” remarks Massot, adding, “an alumni looking to recruit will naturally go to someone who attended the same university as them.”

This is, arguably, no more true than in the world of business and finance, with far-sighted undergrads taking the richness and reach of a business school’s alumni network into consideration before deciding where to do their MBA. In the world of takeovers and stock markets, financial information is power, and first-hand information is usually more valuable and up to date than what is available available in the financial media. Having strong relational ties with an extensive group of peers and colleagues who will trust you with strategic information is crucial to sustained career success in an industry where an employee lives or dies by their ability to create and sustain profit.

For Maria Gallo, getting the most out of your alumni network means not treating it as an emergency service, but rather as a regular, lifelong activity. “Alumni capital encompasses the flows of people, places and resources in those institutions, colleges and organizations we are connected to for life. We aren’t only connected to alumni but to entire organizations, that in and of itself can bring about opportunity.”