Building on the traditional strengths and advantages of alumni networking, a newly launched online Alumni Job Bank has upgraded the informal alumni network into a powerful and comprehensive tool.
The Alumni Job Bank project leveraged the architecture and design of the award-winning MBA Job Bank. Additionally, several features appear in both Job Banks such as customizable HTML messages on the welcome screen, ability to search jobs and companies, and a Career Basket which enables users to store items of interest.
The new application features the ability to search job opportunities by the following criteria:
The Director of Alumni Career Services, Christine Sullivan, noted that within a short time of rollout, the Job Bank had posted more than 1,000 positions in 47 geographic regions (primarily in the United States), representing 61 industries and 34 functional areas. Today, the numbers are even higher and continue to grow as more alumni become aware of the utility of the tool.
Of its strong portfolio of job opportunities and employers, Sullivan highlights the fact that the Job Bank's listings include part-time work and temporary consulting assignments suitable for people at any career stage. Says Sullivan, "We realize that our alumni will experience a number of job shifts, and perhaps even industry changes, over the course of their professional lives... the Alumni Job Bank will go a long way toward supporting them as they navigate through those changes."
The display screen of a single job is arranged to present the "big picture" of the position on top, followed by links to the company profile within the Job Bank, ending with the job contact's address formatted for easy cut-and-paste into a cover letter.
The administrative side of the Alumni Job Bank is quite extensive, including full management of jobs, companies and contacts. It uses not only the code of the MBA Job Bank, but also encourages consistent company information between Alumni and MBA Career Services via data searches, shared company data and special visual indicators.
Staff can use the newsletter feature to share job listings with non-HBS Alumni, specifically those with a reciprocity agreement with the school. A nicely formatted PDF is generated based on multiple search and sort criteria.
To extend the reporting capabilities of the system, staff can run queries and export the data for use in mailings, statistical analysis, or other needs. Pre-defined queries eliminate the need for staff to know SQL code.
Additionally, staff can manage job posting dates in mass, which serves as a workflow and quality control tool.
The Alumni Job Bank greatly extends the career services available to alumni, providing easier and better access to job postings and company information. The new Alumni Job Bank allows alumni to pinpoint positions of interest, provides career services staff powerful tools to manage the information, and facilitates the process of recruiting and hiring.
Footnote: Some text reprinted from the March 2005 Bulletin.
