Do you have a plan to leverage your alumni’s institutional knowledge and professional experience to benefit your current students and recruit your next class?
The vast majority of alumni give their business school experience high marks. Overall, the Net Promoter Score—a widely used metric of customer loyalty—for all types of graduate business programs is +45, putting it on par with many leading companies worldwide. To give back to the business school that gave them so much, many alumni want to give more than merely a donation, but also their time and expertise.
GMAC’s latest survey of b-school alumni found that the most common opportunities that alumni of the classes of 2010 to 2015 want to be contacted about are to mentor recent graduates (20% of respondents) and speak to current students (19%), followed by recruit graduates and alumni for employment (14%), reach out to prospective students (14%), and act as a resource to specialized groups (14%), such as women or underrepresented minorities.
Many schools already have a plan in place to leverage their alumni volunteers. For example, when asked what recruitment technique their program found especially effective, a US-based executive MBA program said, “Our most effective strategy is word-of-mouth through our alumni.” A full-time one-year MBA program in Europe commented, “Finding trustworthy local agents and alumni contacts is the most beneficial tool we have given the size of our recruitment team and the scope of our recruitment efforts.”
For more on alumni engagement, download a copy of the
2016 Alumni Perspectives Survey Report.