Intertwining employability and alumni: A strategic approach

Alumni relations that intertwine employability and alumni engagement: A strategic priority for business schools.

Employability has shifted from a peripheral concern to a central strategic focus for business schools. As students face increasingly non-linear career paths, portfolio careers, gig work, and evolving industry demands, business schools must rethink how employability and alumni strategies intertwine, by utilising alumni better to prepare students for making future career choices.  

Why alumni matter more than ever 

Alumni are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between academic theory and professional practice. They are often underused, not least because of how they can be problematic to reach as their sense of belonging to the institution dwindles (Storey, 2020). As former students now embedded in industry, they offer real-time relevance, peer-to-peer relatability, and authentic insight into the world of work. Their contributions fall into three key areas:

• Motivational storytelling: Alumni inspire students by sharing lived experiences, successes, setbacks, and lessons learned that highlight the importance of engaging fully with university life and career learning opportunities.

• Industry insight: From market intelligence, workplace dynamics, software platforms and professional norms, alumni provide context that complements academic learning and enhances the relevance of skill development and career learning.

• Practical advice: Alumni offer actionable tips for navigating the increasingly competitive job markets for graduates. Their guidance resonates because it is grounded in recent, relatable experiences, from a peer that has sat where they are now sitting.

We frequently witness students responding more positively to alumni than to university staff, because of how they place more value on their authenticity and industry relevance, even when, as it often is, the message is the same (Gribble, 2014).  The opportunity is to build on alumni gratitude whilst equally intertwining within our strategies.  

Embedding alumni into employability strategy 

While many universities have separate Employability and Alumni Development Teams, we have learnt that greater impact occurs when alumni engagement is embedded within employability strategies. This requires intentional planning, resourcing, and long-term relationship building. Unfortunately, such efforts are often overshadowed by metrics like Graduate Outcomes, which focus narrowly on career destinations and overlook the broader value of alumni contributions. 

At Manchester Metropolitan University, we’ve adopted a proactive approach. Our flagship initiative, Week 6: Get Career Ready, now in its fourth year, exemplifies this strategy. It involves a 3-day programme of career focused activities (such as keynote talks, workshops, careers fairs), that seeks to provides dedicated time and space for students to develop their career readiness, led by our central Careers Team and energised by alumni involvement. This year over 30 Alumni return to campus (compared to 22 last year), to share insights, deliver guest talks, and run workshops, helping students shape their career readiness. This year Alumni represented a diverse range of leading organisations including TikTok, Deloitte, The Co-operative, Unilever, Enterprise, Addleshaw Goddard, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, DAZN, and many more. Our approach builds on Savickas’s (2005) career construction theory, by empowering students to reflect on the motivational storytelling shared by alumni, to develop their own career stories. 

Building long-term alumni relationships 

As a Departmental Employability Lead, I’ve cultivated a vibrant alumni community over 17 years as an academic, preceded by 20 years in industry. My approach has evolved into strategic intent, as I’ve learnt that developing strong alumni engagement goes beyond isolated initiatives, by being proactive in maintaining personalised contact (Drezner, 2017) and cultivating alumni’s sense of belonging, through engaging alumni in our guest talks, mentoring programme, Many of my alumni relations were developed during my early academic career, but continues to flourish with each cohort of graduates. 

My approach is grounded in the concept of alumni gratitude (Cownie and Gallio, 2021), where alumni feel a sense of appreciation toward the academic staff who taught them, to the extent that this gratitude not only stimulates their initial engagement in alumni activities but ensures that it is maintained over time. 

A recent example of this was demonstrated when contributing to this year’s Week 6 programme, where I co-created four events tailored to the career capabilities and industry demands of students studying sports business and marketing management, that I also knew would be transferable to many of the other disciplines taught across our Business School, such as sales, business development, social media, e-commerce and partnerships, to ensure a wide appeal. The alumni involved ranged from one of the first students I taught to a recent graduate. Their participation reflected not just my time at Manchester Met, but the strength of relationships that I have built, often behind the scenes, through countless conversations, meetings, and social media engagement. 

Moving forward 

Alumni are invaluable to business schools. yet more work is required to better intertwine employability and alumni strategies to foster a stronger sense of belonging. The opportunities flourish when we build on alumni gratitude whilst equally intertwining within our strategies. Particular attention should be focused on supporting those longer standing academics who are committed to fostering relations with the alumni, to whom they are connected. It is these academics that are best placed to create the sense of belonging amongst alumni. 

Increasingly, we are also learning that alumni are not just former students, they should be considered co-creators of the university’s employability ecosystem. By intertwining alumni and employability strategies, business schools can foster a richer, more relevant experience for students, that can empower their future careers.