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8/29/2024 By Sam Bowman
There’s more to building a career after college than getting straight As. Your network is a valuable tool for helping you access the positions that provide greater satisfaction, higher salaries, and lifetime career success. By graduating from college, you gain access to an exclusive and lucrative network: alumni. Here’s how you can take advantage of your alumni connections to build the career of your dreams.
While you are still attending classes, you should start building professional relationships with fellow students — who will become alumni like you — and existing members of your school’s alumni associations. You might look for a mentor among your fellow graduates, someone who has followed a similar career path to what you hope to achieve, or you might utilize alumni associations for scholarships, internships, and other advantages. By connecting with them before you graduate, you can benefit from a strong network as soon as your career begins.
Social media is an exceedingly valuable tool for staying in touch with the people you meet during college, and many alumni associations have private groups across social media sites to help members communicate. You should join as many of your school’s social media groups as possible, especially on career-building platforms like LinkedIn. By connecting over social media, you can stay up-to-date on happenings within associations and at your alma mater. More importantly, you might be able to coordinate applications with members of your online college community to make your candidacy stand out and find a job easier.
While you are on the web, you might try leveraging your alumni network elsewhere online. Online job boards like Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor are excellent locations for researching career opportunities. Often, within online job applications, you can make note of any connections you have at the company, or else you could mention any connections in your cover letter. Then, even when you aren’t directly asking your fellow alums for work, you can take advantage of your network.
Social media allows you to remain in constant contact with your connections, but relationships tend to become stronger when people meet face-to-face. Therefore, you should attend alumni events, such as reunions, volunteer projects, fundraising events, and more, at least a few times per year. While you are young and relatively inexperienced, you should strive to make good impressions with your fellow alumni: be polite, be inquisitive, and be endearing. Most importantly, ask for contact information from those you closely connect with so you can continue to follow up with them digitally.
If you can’t make an event in person, you might look into virtual attendance options. These should allow you to use video conferencing tools to make networking online more effective. Plenty of alumni events take place over the web, and as long as you use your time at the event wisely — by being professional, engaging, and considerate — you should be able to build your network.
While you might have little to offer fellow alumni during the first few years of your career, you will eventually achieve the career success you seek. When you do, consider giving back to the association that helped you thrive. Donate to scholarship funds, participate in mentorship programs, or help organize networking events to connect with other up-and-coming students looking for guidance.
Your college will give you more than a degree to help you reach your career goals. Connecting with alumni online and in person can build a valuable professional network for lifelong career success.
