Caltech’s LinkedIn Alumni Group in action

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts featuring tips for recent grads from LinkedIn users. Elizabeth Allen is associate director of alumni relations at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where she manages the Caltech Alumni LinkedIn group as well as other online networking resources for alumni.]

As the manager for the Caltech Alumni group on LinkedIn, all requests to join the group go through me. Most of the (legitimate) requests come from alumni, but current students are eligible to join the group too. Though it might seem strange to include students in a group with “alumni” in the title, creating opportunities for students and alumni to interact is beneficial to the members of the group as a whole.

Students have the same group rights and privileges as alumni: they can post discussion topics, perform searches, and make connections. Recently, a student posted a request to the group; she was seeking advice regarding a non-profit she's involved with. An alumnus responded with some resources for her to explore. In examples like this one, students take advantage of the tools and become active members of the alumni community before they graduate. They establish a personal brand, learn about online networking, and make individual connections - connections they can use after they graduate, to find a job, seek advice on a business plan, or research potential employers.

Conversely, alumni can establish direct connections with the next generation of graduates. Those connections keep alumni in touch with alma mater, give them an opportunity to impart their wisdom and experience, and are useful when trying to fill a vacant position.

Additionally, the entire group benefits from the added connections those individual alumni and students bring to the table. The non-alumni (people connected to group members that don’t happen to be graduates of the same university) connect group members to thousands more people than a traditional, closed alumni directory would.

So opening up an “alumni” space to current students means more trusted members in the group, more interaction within the group AND more potential connections beyond the alumni group, all of which add value to the individual member experience.