Early adopters, such as McKinsey and The Boston Consulting Group, developed world-class alumni programs focused on building lifelong relationships with their employees to increase business development opportunities and recruiting efficiency. Microsoft was one of the first and only organizations outside of the consulting arena to create a formal corporate alumni program. That is not the case anymore.

Enterprises are beginning to discover the significant impact an extended talent community—that includes both alumni and employees—can have on their business.  Corporate social networking platforms are now expanding well outside of the professional services realm enabling Global 2000 enterprises to build and manage a private, trusted, branded online community.

Dr. John Sullivan wrote a great article, “Corporate Alumni and Boomerang Recruiting Programs Are Hot Due to Layoffs” asking What Differentiates Great Programs from Average? He feels, and we agree that it is important to incorporate some key differentiators.

“A strong business case. The most important differentiator is the perception of the program as a business initiative, not just another HR fad.

They use technology. The best firms and vendors use either customer-relationship management software or emerging social networking tools to keep track of alumni and effectively maintain the relationship.

They use metrics to continually improve. The shift to “fact-based decisions” means that program emphasis and resources are continually shifted toward areas with a higher impact.”

For more information on corporate alumni communities visit our site at http://conenza.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Alumni Community ROI, Best Practices, enterprise social networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.