Career College Central

Subscribe at careercollegecentral.com 45 Just ask your best friend Google, and you'll find a plethora of successful or healthy relationship components. Here are just a few to consider: • TRUST • COMMUNICATION • SERVICE • APPRECIATION • LOYALTY e strength of our alumni communities lies in the strength of the connections we have with each other. Relationships are built on trust. We build the groundwork for this trust while our alumni are still our students. We provide the quality career education they're looking for and help them find the jobs we promised they'd be able to obtain. is brings up a good question. When does our relationship begin? When we think of alumni, we think of "graduates." So, it would make sense that our relationship begins when they graduate. We need to change that mindset to recognize the value of building that relationship while they're sitting in our classrooms. What if we introduce the concept of "alumni" at their student orientation? We could begin fostering our relationship with them right from the start by simply having one of our graduates speak at their orientation. We all know one of the biggest challenges facing an alumni organization is finding the graduates. ey've relocated, changed addresses and emails. It's difficult to have a relationship with someone you can't find. Focusing on building relationships while alumni are still our students and "under our roof " may have significant and lasting benefits. What if we set up expectations for the future and let them know our intent and reasons for wanting to stay connected upon graduation? Consider this — we need to establish relationships before we need them. How do we build and nurture our relationships? How can we appreciate our alumni? Communication is an obvious factor in any relationship building. Whether we use social media, emails, websites or alumni events, we need to be able to provide clear communicate to our alumni and give them opportunities to communicate with us. We need to find that balance in our giving and taking as well. We can't just take, or focus only on what we can get from them — new leads, student mentoring, placement sites, etc. We need to be willing to give and find ways to be service-oriented. Determine what your grads need and then meet those needs — employment assistance, transcript requests, resume help, etc. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar pointed out, "You can have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want out of life." One way we can do this is by appreciating our graduates. When we at Pima Medical Institute were planning our very first alumni event, our CEO said, "Appreciate our grads — we don't want them to think we are asking anything from them." Moving forward, that has been the philosophy for all of our alumni events. Appreciation goes a long way in building and keeping relationships strong. Strong relationships produce loyalty. Bring your graduates back to their campus for an open house or an alumni event. Not only can you show them updated facilities and introduce new programs, but you can also allow them to share their success. Having your graduates walk away from an event feeling appreciated and proud to be a graduate of your institution is invaluable. ey will talk about it at work. ey will talk about it at family events, and leads are generated because of those casual conversations. Inviting your alumni to share their success stories provides you with a great marketing tool and encourages them to articulate just how valuable their education has been. is increases both their pride and their loyalty. How do we leverage our relationships with our alumni? We can use that feeling of loyalty to get them excited about opportunities for involvement and giving back to their institution. Our graduates make wonderful • Advisory board members • Guest speakers at orientation • Classroom speakers • Student mentors who help with retention • Job fair participants • Graduation speakers • Mock interview assistants • Alumni board members • Faculty members and program directors Remember, this list is only limited by your creativity! Building and sustaining strong relationships with our graduates is central to our desire to have a strong alumni community. JUNE GUDEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER June Gudeman is the alumni coordinator at Pima Medical Institute. She began just over 10 years ago, creating PMI's alumni program from the ground up. She focuses much of her efforts on gathering alumni success stories and creatively sharing them with prospective and current students, as well as the PMI staff and community at large. You can contact her at jgudeman@pmi.edu.

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