Alumni make motivated candidates with known qualities and built-in connections. Engage career services, promote roles, collaborate on student programs, tap referrals, spotlight successes, and more to access graduate talent.
Partner with Local Schools
Build strategic partnerships with career services departments at target feeder schools, colleges, boot camps, and universities to access their upcoming graduate talent directly. Present virtually or on-campus to classes and student groups about your open roles, culture, and advancement opportunities to build awareness.
Host customized recruiting info sessions and hiring events focused on their students. Manage email campaigns through career services promoting roles directly to new grads with relevant degrees. Serve on alumni association boards and host events to network with high-achieving graduates.
Offer to host career coaching workshops on campus or virtually to guide soon-to-be grads on transitioning into roles and workplaces like yours after college. The more you actively engage students before they graduate, the stronger your talent brand recognition will be.
According to recruiting experts, academic institutions want to see their graduates find meaningful employment, making them invested partners in your mutual success. Forge collaborative, multifaceted partnerships expanding your qualified candidate pipelines.
Promote Opportunities
Promote open positions, spotlight employee stories, and share career advice through alumni associations, newsletters, social media channels, virtual job fairs, and on-campus events. Ask partner schools to share roles with recent graduates actively seeking employment. Leverage exclusive alumni job boards only current students and graduates can access through school logins.
Highlight openings and success stories in alumni publications, emails, and direct mailers they already engage with. Tailor messaging around opportunities personalized to that school using familiar language and imagery. Promote specialized hiring events and initiatives recruiting alumni specifically.
Create tailored social media campaigns targeting alumni groups with relevant degrees using school branding and images. Share career advice, company updates, and employee features alumni would find interesting – not just ads. Tap into alumni affinity and school pride, making them eager to help fellow graduates.
Connect Through Student Programs
Convert high-performing interns and apprentices into full-time hires upon graduation after they’ve experienced your organization first-hand. Bring back standout alumni who previously interned in accelerated post-grad development programs, quickly ramping them up based on familiarity with your systems and culture.
Design robust internship and apprenticeship experiences focused beyond daily tasks on skill building, networking, strategic project exposure, mentorship, and cultural immersion. Involve students in meetings, volunteer events, and networking initiatives. Set clear expectations upfront for potential conversion to full-time roles after graduation.
Cultivating these early talent pipeline programs with feeder schools keeps top-performing candidates interested in your organization top of mind for post-graduation employment. According to HR specialists, they reduce risk as known qualities who have proven themselves.
Tap Referral Networks
Incentivize referrals from alumni already working for you through formal employee referral programs offering bonuses for successful placement. Train them proactively on organically sharing open roles and positive career experiences from your company within their collegiate networks, both in-person and online.
Encourage referrals from alumni you engage with through existing partnerships like speaking events or participating in alumni groups and associations. Enable employees to tap into their school pride and sense of community.
Tie tiered referral bonuses to applicant quality and long-term retention to reward great cultural fits beyond just applicant volume. Promote internal examples of interns progressing into employee alumni, making referrals showcasing your talent development.
Empower well-connected teams like college recruiters, university program coordinators, alumni relations liaisons, and alumni employee resource groups to activate their networks through open houses, newsletters, alumni events, mixers, and on-campus activities. Their insider status unlocks powerful word-of-mouth advocacy.
Spotlight Employee Stories
Publicize authentic stories of alumni who thrived professionally after joining your organization. Showcase accelerated post-grad development programs tailored to school partnerships fueling rapid advancement. Feature alumni groups volunteering and giving back together.
Share inspiring examples like a computer science graduate from a target college who rose to spearhead your internal technology team within just a few years. Tie these employee spotlights directly back to the partner school through co-branded thought leadership like newsletters.
Socially recognize standout alumni employee milestones like work anniversaries, awards, certifications, or promotions. Capture compelling video testimonials and written profiles of alumni to share across digital alumni channels and school career centers. Proactively pitch features to alumni publications.
This authentic storytelling converts an unknown employer into an aspirational destination and trusted career accelerator in graduates’ minds. Eventually, alumni organically sell the brand for you as experts based on first-hand experience.
Conclusion
Alumni pipelines provide a flow of motivated, qualified candidates with built-in connections to your company. Proactive school partnerships before and after graduation nurture this channel from student to employee to brand advocate, expanding your reach.
Chattr’s recruitment automation and conversational AI simplify scaling data-driven alumni recruiting efforts as you grow.
