Here’s How to LinkIn Your Alumni

Start with Andy Shaindlin’s post, 10 Pros and 4 Cons of LinkedIn for Alumni Groups. You’ll probably need to build a business case if you don’t have a LinkedIn presence already. Caltech has had a LinkedIn presence since May, 2005—it’s safe to say that it was the first university to take LinkedIn seriously and Andy has written and presented extensively about Caltech’s efforts and results.

[Note: I updated this, based on an email from Andy Shaindlin, who noted that Caltech has been on LinkedIn since 2005, not 2006 as I originally said.]

Then, move on to Kyle James, whose recent post works you through the process of setting up a group. Kyle, the founder of .eduGuru and webmaster at Wofford College, offers practical advice, starting with this all-important caution:

In Woffords case I knew the two parties I needed to get on board with this network was Career Services and the Alumni Department. We would be marketing this new group on both ends and providing a service to both groups. Once talking through the relative safety and low cost of making the leap we all agreed that it was a no brainer and begin to setup the marketing plan.

I particularly like Kyle’s focus on analytics.

Finally, back to Andy Shaindlin again. Alumni Groups and LinkedIn: 7 Additional Considerations, with some practical issues and a note about how your LinkedIn group helps alumni reach far beyond your alumni network, tremendously amplifying your network’s reach. Here’s how Shaindlin puts it:

Kyle presents a hypothetical alumnus who uses LinkedIn to “search [for] alumni who either live in Boston or are lawyers and [to] make a connection that is much more likely to contact them back and be helpful…” This makes sense: use the alumni connection to find a contact. But how likely is that contact to be one of the other Wofford alumni?

Not very likely. But that’s OK with only a couple of hundred connections, a Wofford group member can reach millions of potential contacts. With my 290 LinkedIn connections, I have access to more than 3,081,000 individuals within three degrees of me. And just 50 of my 290 direct connections are members of the Caltech Group.

So, there is great potential value in LinkedIn to alumni using the alumni network as the first step to searching an expanded network (that includes many more non-alumni than alumni). You are expanding your resource pool dramatically by searching for connections even 2 degrees away. (Incidentally, as the Caltech group has reached just over 10% of alumni, Kyle’s goal of 200 alumni Group members is probably a good initial target for a school of Wofford’s size.)

This example shows the strength of weak ties. You may not find a fellow alum who has the experience or knowledge or connections you need, but you will likely find one who knows the person you are seeking.