In professional life, ‘who you know’ is equally important (if not more) than ‘what you know’. Here, your network is your net worth. And which network can be more worthy and strongly bonded than the one sharing common educational inheritance and ethos. Yes, we are talking about Alumni Networks.
So much so is the importance business schools place on their alumni networks and associations that the London based world famous news magazine publication ‘The Economist’ regularly conducts an independent research of several top American and overseas institutions to measure the usefulness of their alumni networks and assesses its potential value of alumni involvement.
Likewise other good B-Schools, ISBR too has a strongly connected Alumni network.
The association provides mentoring support to students and makes them learn through real world experiences. According to one of the senior faculty members, “Some of our alumni, who have been placed with esteem organizations such as Morgan Stanley, Time INC, Niyo, KPMG and so on, are regularly called as Star Invitees to visit our campus for guest lectures, training sessions etc.During discussions with students they provide useful insights on their organization’s recruitment process in context of final placements and internships. They even guide students on importance of peer networking for generating better job leads and seeking valuable career advice.” Many of our Alumni refer and come back to college to hire students for internships and placements. Recently, few of our esteemed alumni Mr. Pradeep from Fellow Class, Sharon Angel and Karan Gidwani from Petoo hired our students during Internship Fair 2017.
The ISBR alumni community is well connected through all channels of advance communication including social media and Whatsapp group.
ISBR Alumni Reunions are organized as its flagship event every year. Last year this gala meet was organized on 3rd July 2016, at Lemon Tree Hotel, Electronic City, Bengaluru. The event attracted many enthusiastic alumni who came all dressed up in retro theme for the nostalgic night. A toast of honor was raised by teachers, staff and the management team to felicitate alumni from the batches starting 2007 to 2016. This year the biggest alumni meet is scheduled to be held on 1st July 2017.
So, in case you are a B-School aspirant and interested to know about leveraging benefits of alumni network for career advancement, here are a few useful:
Your alumni association can prove to be an immense network of professional contacts. It is the most valuable personal network that can reap professional benefits even much stronger than LinkedIn or any other social networking groups since it shares a common inheritance and bonding.
Therefore one needs to start working early in B-School for developing contacts. For this, you can consider getting associated with activities of alumni cell in your college. Use your online alumni directory to connect with people who could be great resources for introductions or recommendations. Invite reputed alumni to visit your campus and engage students in live interactions. You should also attend events of your alumni group to build relationships over the long-term.
By the time you graduate from your business school, you would already have built your own professional network that is closely linked.
Additionally, Alumni networks can be very useful if you are looking to make a career shift, planning for the next promotion, hunting to hire talent for your own company, or even wish to take advantage of sabbatical from work to upgrade your skills/qualification through a certificate program/short term course.After all who else other than your senior alumni in the industry can give you the best piece of advice on matters related to career enhancement?
Besides, most of the B-Schools have a dedicated Alumni portal or Facebook group which usually offers exclusive job postings, resume reviews, webinars, networking events, and a variety of other resources free of charge to its members. More value added services like career counseling or alumni only career fairs can also be organized to leverage benefits of this association.
In case you are a budding entrepreneur and need seed fund for generating working capital for your start-up, you can think of your alumni contacts as a potential source for crowd funding. You may even wish to explore funding support from the alumni association for raising fund to support a socially responsible cause.
In addition to the benefits mentioned above, Alumni networks are a great way to remain in touch with your Alma Mater. By staying in touch with your Institute, you can contribute immensely in its growth and in the process of doing so express your gratitude to the Institution that helped shape your career and find purpose in life.