Young Job Seekers Tap College Alumni Networks for Leads (Wall Street Journal)

Recent graduates struggling to launch careers during the pandemic receive advice, interviews—and offers

Reed Crowson was in the final round of job interviews with a financial-technology firm in Denver this spring when he got the call that is now familiar to the Class of 2020: The company was freezing hiring as it braced for the economic impact of Covid-19.

“Your whole job search is just set back to square one,” says Mr. Crowson, who studied finance and international business at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In May, as this year’s college grads confronted a job market in tatters, many schools turned to a particular group for help: alumni. The stakes are stark. Fifteen years after graduation, college graduates who entered the job market during the early 1980s recession were earning wages that were 2.5% lower than graduates who didn’t start out in a slowdown, according to research by Lisa Kahn, a University of Rochester economist.

 

Reed Crowson, who studied finance and international business at the University of Colorado Boulder, found a job with help from the school’s alumni-mentorship initiative. Photo: Reed Crowson

Colby College, a private liberal-arts school in Waterville, Maine, pledged to find a job, internship or fellowship for every senior within 90 days of graduation by asking alumni to hire them through its Pay It Northward initiative, begun this spring. University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business joined with alumni and local business leaders on a mentorship program designed to help graduating seniors find work. Over the past six months, alums have stepped up to make connections and offer advice on résumés, insight into industries, and encouragement to network—a skill where many graduates feel shaky.

While alumni networks have sometimes been assailed for reinforcing sameness in hiring at a time when many companies are striving to diversify, alums often facilitate new connections, rather than making actual hires themselves. Not all colleges are soliciting alumni help in job-searches, and efforts vary among schools that do tap such networks.

After that disappointing phone call, Mr. Crowson decided to rethink his job search, focusing more on reaching out to people on LinkedIn and less on submitting applications online. When he learned about CU Boulder’s alumni-mentorship initiative, which launched in May, he applied and was matched with Jeremy Frenkel, a 2012 graduate of the school who now works in investment management.

Together they brainstormed a list of companies where Mr. Crowson was interested in working—and where Mr. Frenkel might be able to connect him with an employee. Through the process Mr. Crowson landed an interview for a financial analyst role at HomeAdvisor, a site that connects homeowners and service providers, such as contractors. The company hired him in August. He hopes to buy Mr. Frenkel coffee or a beer when it is safe for them to meet in person.

Mr. Frenkel urges recent grads to overcome their hesitation to network, which he says has been essential to his own career. “The further I got out of college, I felt like I developed that network and I’m comfortable sharing those connections,” he says.

 

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Almost 700 alumni, parents, and friends of the college came forward after Colby put out its initial request in May, highlighting existing internships and job openings as well as many opportunities they had created specifically for this year’s graduates. Colby President David A. Greene says in a typical year, about 95% of members of the roughly 500-member graduating class have a job or internship or are headed to grad school by about six months after graduation. Currently, roughly 10% of Colby’s 2020 grads are still looking for their first opportunity.

Alumni can help job-seekers make connections inside companies. They also can help them stay motivated in a punishing climate. Kevin Muñoz says he graduated from Colby in May feeling confident about his prospects, but his self-esteem waned as he applied for about 100 jobs and received rejection after rejection. A first-generation college graduate, he worried about disappointing his family.

 

Kevin Muñoz landed a job last month with digital identity-verification company IDmission. Photo: Ariel Alejandro Gonzales

Through Pay It Northward he connected with about a dozen alums in different industries who offered everything from mock interviews to insight into the tech industry, where Mr. Muñoz was looking for a job. They checked in with him periodically, which he says helped him stay focused and positive. The Colby program connected Mr. Muñoz with digital identity-verification company IDmission, which hired him in October as a solutions consultant onboarding clients. The company’s CEO, Ashim Banerjee, is the father of a current Colby senior. After Mr. Muñoz accepted the job, he reached out to his alumni connections to tell them first. “They were very integral to my job-search process,” he says.

Mr. Banerjee says working directly with the college to find applicants has made him reconsider his company’s hiring process, which previously consisted primarily of posting on job sites. “We’d get flooded with responses and mostly by the time you started wading through [applicants], you’d give up and look for someone who knew somebody. You can’t scale that way.”

In many cases, a friendly conversation with an alum can help grads shine in a way they might not in other settings. After four years as a pre-med student at Rice University, Simi Rahman decided during her senior year that she didn’t want to become a doctor. She felt herself on a downard spiral, which intensified with the onset of the pandemic.

 

Simi Rahman’s organizational experience at Rice University prompted another Rice grad to help with her job search. Photo: Madeline Strong

She began thinking about how to package her science background and research experience when seeking a job at a start-up. Through LinkedIn, she reached out to Ian Akash Morrison, a 2013 Rice graduate who had co-founded a campus start-up accelerator that is still active at the university.

Mr. Morrison was impressed with Ms. Rahman’s experience coordinating an annual week-long campus orientation event, a résumé line someone else might have overlooked. She thought an encouraging conversation would be the end of their interaction, but a few days later he called to say that the consulting firm he had founded, Optio Ventures, was looking for an analyst. He thought she should apply.

“In March, even in September, none of this seemed possible to me,” says Ms. Rahman, who landed the job and began this month. “I just kind of needed a chance.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/young-job-seekers-tap-college-alumni-networ...