EverTrue looked at Career Moves from alumni of colleges in the Independent College Advancement Associates. Here’s what we learned.
Download the complete assessment for each ICAA member institution here.
The average person changes jobs 12 times in their career. EverTrue’s analysis shows that more than 95% of the latest alumni career data isn’t in your database.
Career data is really difficult to track and keep updated. (Well, it used to be. We fixed it. More on that in a minute.) It’s also a critical component of connecting with alumni around their interests and identifying new prospects.
Up-to-date career information is the must-have fuel that powers every department in alumni relations and development.
In alumni relations, constantly updated career information lets graduates network with each other and allows teams to segment their audience. On the fundraising side, development staff use the data to grow matching gift programs, discover new prospects, and build better relationships with managed donors. There are so many ways to put this information into action — our friends at West Point put together nine examples here.
Last month, we dug into the career data of ICAA member institutions to see trends among their alumni who have recently changed jobs or been promoted.
Analysis of recent Career Moves among ICAA alumni
Download the complete assessment for each ICAA member institution here.
For this report, we used our Career Moves tools to analyze LinkedIn data on job changes within ICAA member institutions, looking at every alum who updated their LinkedIn profile between mid-April to mid-July.
(In case you haven’t heard, Career Moves by EverTrue delivers accurate career updates every 90 days for alumni. We’ll let you know who’s moved, changed jobs, taken a promotion, or retired. It’s the best way to keep your career data up to date.)
No surprise here, the largest ICAA member institution (Case Western Reserve University, a longtime EverTrue customer) had the most job changers. But the majority of ICAA institutions saw between 500 and 1,000 alumni get promoted, change companies, or retire.
Remember, this is just a 90-day sample. That means at most institutions, thousands of your graduates are changing jobs every year. Do you have that information?
This is where things get interesting. We used LinkedIn data to look at the number of recent job-changers and compared it to the total number of alumni. Columbus Academy saw more than 10 percent of its alumni body change jobs.
Kenyon College (another EverTrue customer), Centre College, The College of Wooster, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Mercyhurst University, and Walsh University all had more than 5% of their alumni base report a career change.
Current job information is a gold mine for prospect discovery. We help Career Moves customers connect with C-Suite alumni at Fortune 500+ companies, alums who have joined a hot startup’s board, or partners at an investment or law firm.
In this slide, we looked at the percentage of alumni who had changed jobs in the last 90 days and took on a title that was Vice President, Partner, or in the C-Suite. Combine their job title with past engagement or giving, and you have a great list for leadership or major gift prospects.
DePauw University saw nearly 12 percent of all alumni who changed jobs take a VP+ position.
Ohio Wesleyan University, Davis and Elkins College, Columbus Academy, Baldwin Wallace University, Denison University, and Case Western Reserve University all had more than 10% of their job-changing graduates land in roles with a title at Vice President or above.
Most institutions can expect to see more than 5 percent of their most recent job-changers at this level.
How can I put this career data into action?
Here’s what it looks like for Baldwin Wallace University. They have 28,000 alumni on LinkedIn, 1,000 changed jobs in the last 90 days and 10 percent of those were at the VP+ level, including the three graduates we’ve listed here.
Among the top new employers are Ernst & Young and PNC, which both have really strong matching gift programs.
Now it’s up to the Baldwin Wallace team — and advancement teams at every one of the ICAA member institutions — to take the next step. Congratulate these alumni on their job change, update ratings, re-assign prospects, and build better relationships with them.
We’ve got a guide for using up-to-date Career Data and ideas from West Point to help you get started.
Ready to see more? Request a demo and sample Career Moves data.