Get Your Students Hired
We do have a FB page, I will be meeting with the VP of Career Services and see what alumni relationships and support he has in place now and what we can develop
Christian,
Creating and maintaining a website definitely takes a level of commitment, both financially and in the area of personnel needed to manage it. That being said, it is a fantastic method for communication. Often schools spend an incredible amount of money trying to find and maintain contact with their graduates. A website that includes Alumni Profiles where grads can update their personal and employment info accomplishes that same thing. In fact, graduates will find YOU via a website rather than you attempting to find them.
Some schools are using Facebook to accomplish many of the same things an individual alumni site might use to connect with their alumni.
June
Getting IT support and staff members support to make a priority of setting up site.
Francis,
Finding former students is always a challenge - especially ones who have been out of contact for a long time. If you can put together an alumni website (stand alone or as part of your current site), you'll be surprised how many graduates will find you all on their own! In today's world, it's very easy for them find you with very little effort. (Be sure to give them an opportunity to update their information on your site.) Great ideas using success stories in whatever ways you can. Your alumni success stories are a tremendous source of advertising for your school.
June Gudeman
For me the biggest challenge will be finding and contacting former students. We have been in business since 1972 and have a very long alumni list but because of ownership changes and other factors finding former students is a real challenge. I plan to use all the online sources available to locate and contact former students. I will include success stories and plan on making a success wall at school to show off accomplishments to perspective students.
Chris,
After hearing your challenges, it sounds like you've done a great job of using Facebook to creatively manage and communicate with your grads. You are doing with Facebook what many schools spends thousands of dollars to accomplish via their website. Kudos to you! I encourage you to continue to creatively address the needs of your alumni.
June Gudeman
We have quite a few challenges at my campus, mostly related to manpower. I am one of only two Student Services/Placement coordinators, and am also now heading up the Alumni program. We also have no IT staff to help with website creation or modifying software to improve tracking abilities. We have an international alumni site, but no one seems to know how to gain access to it. As a work-around, we have begun using Facebook, creating an exclusive Alumni group and using the many easy-to-edit features within Facebook to post graduate stories, events, and stay in touch with our graduates.
Angela,
That's a really good question. In my situation, I believe part of the motivation is that we display our stories on the alumni site (with photos). Grads see those and, I believe, it causes them to think -- "hey, that could be me!" Also, we put together Alumni Success Story Posters in the lobby and hallways of each of our campuses. By the time they are graduates, they've seen those hanging around campus and they want to be one of those success stories. To get started, you may want to involved your staff/instructors to help you gather a bunch that you can use for display purposes until you can gather the momentum you need.
June
Do you have any suggestions on how to encourage or motivate graduates to submit a success story?
Angela,
You've hit the nail on the head -- keeping any website 'current' takes time. But, it is so important to keep it fresh and keep grads coming back to visit. I like your idea of having a collective effort.
June
Some challenges that we will face in setting up an effective alumni association website are keeping it current, obtaining success stories and student/graduate participation. We are a very small department whose time is already consumed with many other responsibilities. It would need to be a collective effort so that all the pressure, to maintain the website, wouldn't fall onto one person. We haven't had very much success in obtaining graduate success stories. Most graduates we find don't want to take the time to write one, which is sad.
Very true. I like that idea about Transcript Request. I'm going ti be training with the student services dept. I guess I'll be able to have more insight about all the things they are doing.
Thanks for the feedback.
Daniela,
It sounds like you are thinking about incentives to bring your graduates to your alumni website. It's important to think about what things you could include that would provide that "buy-in"?
You might consider components that alumni are looking for like a Job Board, an Alumni Directory (to connect with old classmates), or other helpful information they might be interested in - Career Services, Loan Info, Continuing Education. You may also want to consider some things that would, literally, force them to your site like Transcript Request Forms or Grad Surveys.
June
Students can fall into different catagories, some can be self starters other need to be constantly connecetd directly on a day to day basis etc.
That being said, if we can find a way to keep students engaged by sending out incentive. Like extended classroom setting tutorials or different perks for reffering friends etc. It may be beneficial.
Just an idea I'm fairly new in this area.
Ginny,
Great ideas! The main job of an Alumni Director or Coordinator is going to be managing that website. It WILL be the method of communication and the main connecting point in your 'relationship' with your graduates.
June
Sharon,
If your corporate office is not willing to allow you to develop a separate site, I like your idea of adding even a link from your main site with a couple pages dedicated to your graduates. Possibly being able to monitor the number of hits to those pages would provide the value to those who would make the future decision regarding having a more robust stand alone alumni site.
June
Sharon,
It sounds like you have a pretty accurate picture of the challenges ahead of you. I like your idea of inviting people to be a part of starting a program. It's going to be important to find people who see the value and are passionate about a relationship with your graduates.
June
Sharon,
Creating and maintaining a website definitely takes a level of commitment, both financially and in the area of personnel needed to manage it. That being said, it is a fantastic method for communication. Often schools spend an incredible amount of money trying to find and maintain contact with their graduates. You don't even necessarily have to start an actual 'association' if you just begin by providing a simple alumni website. A website that includes Alumni Profiles where grads can update their personal and employment info accomplishes that same thing. In fact, graduates will find YOU via a website rather than you attempting to find them.
June
Getting a dedicated long-term commitment from someone to head this type of department as well as having a good knowledge of websites or trying to get one person to do both would be the best for our small school....commitment and knowing how to set up a functional website that would be somewhat interactive....and be able to get and keep that person so they are financially benefiting.
Buddy
Well I don't think we will have that many challenges as we have a website that is continually changing. I think they challeng will be to set one up for our school only that may not be allowed. So I am going to have to check with our coperate office and the IT Department to see what they will allow us to do. That may be the challeng. If they will not allow us to have a seperate website then we will have to find a way to intergreat it with our official site for the school.