I could write a book on the excuses I’ve heard from kids in July/August/September after they’ve graduated as to why they don’t yet have a job. Their parents call to beg me to help (I work in corporate recruiting, so I know a few things about how young grads get jobs) so I spend time with the kids. They couldn’t participate in the resume “drops” in October or November of senior year because they didn’t have a resume yet. They couldn’t participate in on-campus interviewing because it conflicted with the big sorority or fraternity event/trip/formal/etc. They couldn’t get an internship for the summer after junior year, which usually leads to a permanent job offer because the big lacrosse tournament interfered with interviewing. They couldn’t take the assessments, do the mock interviews, the alumni “meet and greets” that career services offered because the career services office is on another part of campus which would have involved taking the campus shuttle and only losers take the shuttle. Etc.
Career Services- it’s not a placement office where someone comes to your kids dorm room, plucks them out of bed, and puts them in an entry level/career track job with health benefits and a 401K. Those jobs are out there- but it’s going to involve some effort on your kids part to show up wearing shoes at various events and training programs and mock interviews and video chats. And a kid who hasn’t visited the office by September of senior year- well, if there’s a family business to inherit, great. Big universities are going to have experts in fellowships, grad school admissions, not-for-profit/TFA and City Year opportunities, in addition to the corporate stuff. So the excuse that “my social life comes first” isn’t going to sound so cute by August after graduation…
My LAC senior had her desired job lined up by October of senior year. But I will say that the post by @blossom rings true. In D1’s case, it took her a long time to take advantage of the career office. In her case it wasn’t social commitments but feelings of anxiety and inadequacy that held her back initially. And alumni contacts were of no help in her case, but it’s not surprising that an LAC’s alumni network would be smaller.
Back in the thread someone said their “elite” school connections had not helped and I think it’s important to note that there is no connection between the eliteness of a school and the strength of the alumni network! I went to an elite LAC, left the area and never again ran into an alum in a work related environment - the school was too small! :). OTOH my D got her first internship because the company’s founder was an alum. She got her second because her school took her as a sophomore to a professional conference. Her third came from references and connections from the first two. A “foot in the door” can be critical and your professors’ connections can be as important as the alumni network.
I read a study last year on alumni networks- among the top ten (in terms of how engaged alumni were in helping current students and graduating seniors launch) were SMU, Notre Dame, and Smith. Smith I understand- they’ve had a “women helping women” thing going on forever. But SMU and Notre Dame surprised me!
A strong network doesn’t help a kid who won’t engage.
@blossom Don’t get me started on SMU. For a Texas student who plans to stay in Texas or nearby after graduation, you can’t beat UT, TAMU, or SMU. They are “cultish.”
@blossom. Your posts are spot on and your advice is great. Kinda hard to say if the alumni network is working if the student doesn’t take the first step to find out.
One child’s larger, elite school’s alumni network has been more or less useless 3 years out. Another is at a LAC and it’s rumored to be outstanding. I think it can really depend on the “cultishness” (or closeness of the community) mentioned by @itsgettingreal17.
Itsgettingreal- we’re talking SMU alums in Chicago, St. Louis, NY helping new grads! So a Texas kid doesn’t need to stay in Texas to benefit!
Knowstuff- yes. That first email can be really hard but alums who have signed up for the college mentoring program do so because they really, really, really want to help. So students who don’t engage- they’ve got to take that first leap.
For my son the alumni connections have been valuable. He is a college sophomore this year. His senior year in hs he was looking for a summer shadowing job with a vet or a vet assistant paid position. Through his network he saw a friend sharing a FB add for a local vet hiring a full time vet tech. This was an equine vet (what my son wants to do) but son of course could not do that job. He chose to go ahead and contact the vet to see if he could shadow him. They had a phone conversation and it turns out the vet is an alumni of the vet school that my son will be attending (OOS). That got him a foot in the door. After his interview he has had a paid position for the past two summers and this one coming up. The alumni has become his mentor and has taught him a lot, giving him much more responsibility than he would have had at most other clinics.
He has also become very good friends with the alumni advisor to his fraternity (since he is the President of the fraternity). The alumni is a recently retired CEO of a major corporation and currently on the board for several national companies. He has learned a lot about the business world from this connection and has a great LOR source when he needs it.
My dad, an engineering professor, was contacted every year by alumni looking for good students. If Dad recommended them, there was a good chance they would be hired. The ironic thing was that DH and I graduated the month the oil prices collapsed in 1986, so there were no jobs available that Dad could recommend us for!
I got my first job out of law school through an alum who didn’t know me but pushed my resume along. My older son got a summer internship in a similar way. I’ve advised a number of students from my alma mater over the years - I always answer a student’s email. My son recently helped coach a fellow college alum through the waitlist process at his law school. Alumni connections can have a real impact. Both of our colleges (Williams, Colgate) have very active alumni networks. Having said that, I don’t think this is a reason to pick a college. But it probably does reflect that we both had very positive experiences at our respective colleges.
2%. At least in tech/engineering. I’m not going to lend my professional reputation to someone just because we have a past zip code in common. If they’re good, that’s a whole different thing but that wasn’t the asked question.
OTOH, I participare in some alumni events for engineering students at dear old Whatsamatta U, so it isn’t 0 either.
DD’s school strongly urged all freshmen to visit the career center the very first month of school. They helped students pull together a resume, practice their elevator pitch, and gave them tips for the career fair. The school has an app so students can search which companies are coming, who is looking for which majors, and who would be open to talking to freshmen. The career center walks kids through all of that and everyone was encourage to attend the first career fair to practice. DD said that many of the companies brought employees that were grads of the school. Lots of students, dd included, went back to the career center in January to help updating the resume again prior to the end of January career fair. A number of freshmen who went to that fair landed co-ops and internships.
The support and structure is crucial but students definitely need to be self motivated to take advantages of the services and opportunities.
I suppose an effective career center and active alumni can be two different features of a college or university, but often they are intertwined. Especially if alumni are encouraged to make their own internships and jobs available to students, or even make them available only to students of the college (I have seen both).
And of course neither alumni nor career center staff are going to come knock on your kid’s dorm room door. The student must take advantage of the resources that are there.
IMO that begins with early visits to career center (frosh year), taking advantage of an organized alumni mentor system if there is one, keeping professors in the loop about professional goals and progress, having an updated LinkedIn profile as well as a vetted and updated resume “on file” with whatever software the career center uses that recruiters can see (Quest, Handshake), and of course work and internships throughout the college years, are things I can think of that can make a big difference.
I think it really depends…some kids end up not needing to use the alumni network at their school and others do.My kid’s private HS has a strong alumni network as well and a few of my D’s friends got jobs and internships from fellow St. M’s alumni! For H and I, we didn’t really use our alumni networks at our schools, but that was probably by chance…we didn’t end up needing to. And that’s considering both our schools have a lot of gung ho alumni! For D she did get an internship through the career center, but has never used her alumni network to find a job. Though she does have some co workers who are also alumni of her university. She got her most recent job through a family friend. She also got a temp job through a high school friend…
I don’t think you should choose a college solely based on the strength of their alumni network. Reaching out to fellow alums to network and find a job is great, but it shouldn’t be the only way you try to find a job. Sometimes these people don’t have any jobs to offer. That said, students should definitely take advantage of the career center and any job finding resources their college may have. Reaching out to alumni should be part of that as well. Having a large network of people you know, which may include fellow alums, is always a good thing.
I never used my alumni network as a resource for work but as a pool of great people DH and I could meet up with anywhere on the planet who have shared some magical years in Ann Arbor. We are both lifetime members of the U-M alumni organization and get together with other alums to watch football games, attend cocktail hours, talk to prospective students, raise scholarship funds, and just enjoy ourselves at each other’s homes. No matter where we go, we’ve been able to find an active club. Grads leave Michigan, but Michigan never leaves us.
Our son is a member of The Long Gray Line, a band of brothers that he can count on for life. He doesn’t have to worry about a job for the next nine years, so I suspect he will rely on his military network for the same type of comaraderie we do ours.
In the Louisiana business/political world, LSU undergrad + Tulane law is the most potent combination possible, though M7 business schools, Ivies/equivalents, etc. would have their own networks that may be helpful.
@blossom and @itsgettingreal17, neither ND or SMU surprise me. They both are cultish and have student bodies that tend towards high SES (so alums would be more in a position to help).
DS has found it helpful. Pretty much everyone he has reached out to for informational interviews has been willing to talk to him and get him in the door (if that’s what he wanted.)
Ime, and now in his, while smaller schools have smaller networks, they are very strong.