Importance of Alumni Guidance For Better Career Prospects

 
Importance of Alumni Guidance For Better Career Prospects

An institute looks for various ways to engage alumni in influencing prospective learners' decision-making. 

Alumni provide the perfect opportunity to foster a lifelong learning culture. They provide counsel and valuable feedback on an institute's motto, curriculum, career readiness, and reputation. 

Why do Institutes Focus on Engaging Alumni? 

Institutes involve Alumni to focus on education programs, counseling, and volunteering. They act as a strategic asset to develop the professional integration of students.  

Alumni relations are an important part of an institute's advancement activities for many reasons:

•  Alumni are an institute's most loyal supporters
•  Alumni generate invaluable word-of-mouth among their social and professional networks.
• By engaging alumni, an institute can continue to benefit from their skills and experience
• Alumni are great role models for current students and offer practical support to students as they start their careers

How does Alumni Engagement Benefit? 

- Develop a Global Community: When alumni are engaged, they become more willing to lend their time and resources to their alumni community.  This creates a network of individuals who can contact, support, or collaborate with each other for business-driven ventures. 

- Mentorship Opportunities: Former students who keep close ties to their colleges over the years may be eager to return to take up mentorship positions. This can benefit current students as they get expert insight from former students. With a strong network in place, current students can access valuable career guidance from alumni. 

- Brand Ambassadors: Proud alumni can serve as effective brand ambassadors for the institute. They will share positive reviews and recommendations with their peers. An engaged alumni network can be a valuable asset for increasing awareness of the institution’s brand. 

How does Alumni Engagement Help Students?

Alumni engagement leads to lifelong relationships. They can help the current students to choose the right career stream or college, internships, placements, and donations or can even fund scholarships. Alumni management, when done in the right way, can help current students in their career success and earn a reputation for their institutions. 

1. Helping Students Choose The Right Career: Alumni can help students to choose the right subjects, prepare for their target college/university, and guide them about the career streams they should opt for. Alumni relations can also play a vital role during the college/university admission process. They can also guide students to prepare for recruitment interviews and groom them accordingly.

2. An Improved Student Experience: With a strong alumni engagement program, institutions can improve their student experience. When students see the outcome of former students, it can create a stronger impact and builds trust. 

3. Success Stories for Motivation: Real-life stories are always a big motivation for students. When alumni share their stories, it convinces the students to pursue their dreams. 

4. Parents Chat with Alumni: Parents are always anxious about the future of their children. However, a chat with the alumni enables them to c get suitable suggestions and guidance from the alumni network. 

5. Scholarships to Students: Successful alumni can always become the backbone of financially weak students. They can provide scholarships and help those students achieve their dreams. 

What is Alumni Mentoring?

Alumni mentoring involves alumni of an institution voluntarily registering themselves to become mentors of current students. While acting as alumni mentors, they become role models for the students, help them remove career-related frustration, and build self-confidence.

Roles of an Alumni Mentor

An alumni mentor is not only an instructor but has to play multiple roles while coaching the student. Now we know the meaning of alumni mentoring, let’s talk about the top five roles of an alumni mentor. 

1. A Guide: The role of an alumni mentor is to guide students to overcome any challenge they face in their professional and personal lives. A mentor listens to the issues of a student, brainstorms the possible solutions to them, and guides him with further steps. Along with guidance, a mentor gives constructive feedback to help him improve in every aspect of life. 

2. A Friend: Alumni mentor acts like a friend who helps them fight everyday brain battles. Being a senior alumni mentor, he/she can also become a well-wisher and stand beside him/her during good and bad times. 

3. A Career Counsellor:  Alumni act as a career counselor for a student. Drawing an action plan to accomplish career objectives becomes the main aim of a good mentor. Alumni also sets up a brilliant source of professional networking for the mentee.

4.  A Trainer: Students in their early careers need several skills to step into the corporate ring. An alumni mentor can help enable a student to become a leader of tomorrow by inculcating negotiation skills, communication skills, and convincing power. Moreover, an alumni mentor can train a student to enable him to relate with different people while dealing in the corporate world.  

5. An Opportunity Provider: An alumni mentor would have an influential presence in his industry. An alumni mentor can offer internships to students with learning caliber. Further, a mentor can also give job opportunities to his mentee.

What are the Benefits of Alumni Mentoring?

1. Get Career Insights: Mentors can guide students and help them choose the right career. From choosing the path to progressing in their career, students can ace their careers with the help of a mentor.

2. Expert Notes: Mentors can provide fruitful resources to the mentee. Students can get access to the knowledge the mentor has and can use it for their betterment. Mentors can help the students meet various experts in their own connections. 

3. Stabilized Thought Process: With proper guidance, students don't go delusional about their career choices. Spending a few hours with an alumni mentor weekly is the key to developing a personality that enables students to survive in their professional journeys forever. 

4. Achieve Self-Esteem: An alumni mentor always believes the mentee and finds various innovative ways to boost their confidence. A mentee tries to understand, analyze, and learn from the failures, and celebrates every little success with enthusiasm under the right guidance. This way, students can achieve self-esteem with the help of a mentor. 

5. A Friend: A mentor becomes a lifetime friend for the mentee. Students can run to their mentors anytime when they need help. While they learn from each other, a student and an alumni mentor can create a friendship bond, share their stories and create an exclusive bond. 

What are the Strategies to Improve Alumni Engagement? 

1.  Start an Early Engagement: Students are at college for a relatively short period and are alumni for their entire lives, so the foundation of their relationship with the university is built well before they become alumni. Build lifelong relationships by making current students feel valued, and make it clear the journey doesn't end as soon as they graduate.

2. A Consistent Approach: A sustained approach is needed for long-term success. A well-designed strategy that can be executed in the short term and provides long-term outcomes should be the focus.

3. Provide Interesting news: The alumni body is hugely diverse. Age, beliefs, location, and background can vary widely, so messages should target the right people. All content should be interesting and entertaining, which is difficult to do if alumni are all treated the same.

4. Connect With Alumni Through Social Media: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter facilitate rich content and engaging discussion.  Using social media platforms as an important tool to establish a presence will connect the alumni in a private network.

5. Involve Alumni In Campus Life: Alumni should be invited to the campus and meet current students. Seminars, competition panels, speeches, retreats, mentoring, or student body events should be conducted to involve the alumni on a regular basis. When alumni engage with students, it creates valuable relationships that serve both parties as they progress through life.

Let's Connect

Alumni mentoring can prove beneficial in the career counseling of students. Institutions just need to build a connected community where all the stakeholders (parents, teachers, students, and alumni) can interact with each other freely. 

Canam always prioritizes its students and acts as a bridge to provide the right communication forum. Our alumni are always ready to express their thoughts and share their experiences. The main objective of our alumni is to make students comfortable and show them the right path as per their choices. 

Canam believes in building strong relationships with alumni to continue the legacy and provide the right guidance and assurance at the right time.