Your career and your alma mater: these two things are inextricably linked.
But. When you’ve had a job shakeup (positive or not) in the past, did you receive a message from the college that prepared you for said career change? Did you hear anything from the place where you spent years of your life (and a substantial sum of money) intentionally trying to mold a meaningful career path?
Where was your alma mater at these big-deal-job-change moments?
Colleges and Universities pride themselves on providing the degree that shapes the career arcs of their graduates. And yet, more than 95% of career updates from recent job-changers are not in a typical college’s database (source: EverTrue) and go unacknowledged.
The North Carolina State University team decided to do something about this missed opportunity.
With a lean team and a limited budget, the NC State team dug into their job-changer data in EverTrue, and here’s what they saw:
- 5% of their alums change jobs every year (about 3,500, quarterly).
- The majority of these annual job-changers were unassigned.
- 78% had never given before.
- 17% were SYBUNTS.
- 78 of them had just received promotion to a C-Suite position, and 55 were celebrating retirement.
To take advantage of so much untapped potential, the NC State team needed a simple, scalable process that would fit within their existing staffing structure and allow them to congratulate alumni job changers on a quarterly basis.
So, they opted to receive automatic alumni job change notifications every 90 days through EverTrue.
Now, the NC State team turns that career data into a congratulatory ThankView video from Reshunda Mahone, their Associate Vice Chancellor of Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving.
Imagine receiving one of these videos from your alma mater after a job change? How would you feel?
In the month of April, the NC State team congratulated over 2,600 job changers via ThankView.
These ThankView “congrats!” videos got a 73.4% average open rate and 34% click-through rate.
After receiving a ThankView “congrats!” video, 5 of these job changers (and counting!) have made an annual gift. 137 updated their contact information.
Alums enjoy receiving these “congrats” from their alma maters, and often send responses such as “This was so awesome to receive! Thank you! Go Pack!” (This is an actual response from a young alum who just changed jobs.)
The takeaways
Many times, the first message we get from our alma maters after graduating is, “Hey, you graduated, you got a great job, now give us some money.” Now, through this Career Moves process, when NC State alums land their first post-grad gig, they will receive a warm, heartfelt “congrats!”
NB: For alums who have recently lost their jobs, it’s obviously a less-celebratory moment. This is your chance to step in, remind them that you care, and connect them to the deep resources and support of your Career Center.
In Reshunda’s words, “What graduates do outside of the institution after they graduate matters just as much as what they do on campus as a student. Anytime we can highlight or congratulate an alum, it says that we (the University) are paying attention and we celebrate with you.”
Make this happen at your institution
For all advancement shops, monitoring alumni job changers is now super easy, thanks to Career Moves by EverTrue (automatic job changes delivered to your alumni database every month). And the process of turning job changes into “congrats!” videos is pretty much as simple as choosing a good video background and channeling authentic pride for the accomplishments of your alumni.