All right.
Hello, everybody.
And thank you for joining us for today's webinar--
Eight Ways Boston University Can Jumpstart Your Career.
My name's Jeff Murphy, and I'm an associate director
on the Alumni Relations team.
I'm also a proud alumnus of the Questrom School of Business.
Today's webinar is sponsored by BU Alumni Relations,
and it's offered to our 335,000 alumni around the globe.
I know we have alumni today joining us
from some very faraway places like Beijing.
We have two different alumni who appear not to be
related in Milton, Ontario.
We've got alumni in Quito, Ecuador, London, India,
Pakistan, Turkey, Thailand, El Segundo, California, Granby,
Colorado, Windermere, Florida, Kailua Kona, Hawaii,
New Albany, Indiana, Indian Trail, North Carolina,
Pflugerville, Texas.
And as always, dozens of Massachusetts alumni from towns
like Natick, Needham, Newton, North Andover,
North Chelmsford, Northeastern, and more.
For each and every one of you out there,
please know that we really do value
your opinion on this and every program that we offer.
Some brief housekeeping notes.
As you know by now, this webinar is
being hosted on our Zoom online meeting platform.
If you experience any trouble with the audio
or visual portions of today's presentation,
I'll ask that you contact Zoom support directly
at the number you see on your screen.
That's 1-888-799-9666.
Today's presentation is being recorded and will soon be made
available for on-demand viewing on the BU Alumni Association
website found at bu.edu/alumni.
I'm looking forward to taking all of your questions today.
You're welcome to submit them throughout the presentation
using the Q&A feature.
If you hover over the top or bottom of your screen on Zoom,
you should see a menu pop up.
Select Q&A, and then you can type your question
in at any time.
I'll try to keep my eye on the Q&A feature
as we go through the presentation,
but if I missed anything, I'll be sure to review all of them
at the end to make sure that you get answers for the questions
that you have.
And with that, let's get started.
Throughout your career, the BU Alumni Association
is committed--
I should also mention.
Please know that we might see the lights turn off
from time to time.
I apologize for that.
Throughout your career, the BU Alumni Association
is committed to making sure that you
have access to valuable online tools
and social media communities that will be helpful to you
in your career.
My goal today is to give you a very brief overview
of these resources, 90% of which you can find right
on our website at any time.
And you see it in front of you--
bu.edu/alumni/careers.
So just remember that website and you'll
be good to go for most of these.
My plan today is to run through all of the things
that we have to offer with some slides.
And then I'll be jumping back and forth
between my slide deck and our actual website and the internet
overall so I can show you how to find some of these resources.
Looking over the people who've signed up to be on this webinar
today, I find it very interesting.
We've got a real even spread of ages.
You can see we've got 50 alumni in their 20s, 55 in their 30s,
almost an equal number of people in their 40s and 50s.
And we certainly do have some alumni
who signed up for today who were in their 60s.
And that's excellent because the resources
I'm going to be talking about, I think,
can be useful in any stage of your career.
Now, certainly some things might be
more valuable at the beginning of your career as opposed
to the end.
But we're going to talk about things that I think all of you
can make use of.
And one other thing that will be helpful
to me, just to get a little bit more information from you
about all of you and what kind of career stage you're in.
So I've put up a poll, and if you all
could go ahead and select the answer that you think
is most appropriate for the stage that you're in.
Just go ahead and check off the right box.
Are you a new professional seeking advancement?
Are you in middle management and just looking to break through?
Are you an experienced professional
who's thinking about just a complete career change?
Are you somebody who's been working for a long time--
a senior professional with lots of skills
and are considering a second act career,
or even thinking about heading into retirement?
Are you currently unemployed or underemployed actively
looking for a new job?
Maybe you are happily employed, and I certainly
hope that's the case, and just looking
to stay competitive and make sure
that you know about all the resources
that are available to you.
A couple of you feel like none of these categories fit.
And then if you're just here because you
love a free webinar on your lunch break on the east coast,
here, that certainly makes sense.
So no real surprises for me here.
We've done this presentation a couple times.
And it looks like a lot of you might be actively looking
for a new job or unemployed or underemployed.
Certainly, we'll talk about resources
that BU offers exclusively to you as an alumna that I think
will help you hopefully find some opportunities and build
your network.
We'll talk a lot about that.
Many of you are thinking about just a total career change.
We have some young alumni who are new and are
looking for that first real opportunity.
Those of you, you know, considering a career change,
I think we've got some things to offer.
So thank you all of you for weighing in.
Excuse me for one second here.
And I should also just mention, if you
see me looking to the side here, it's
because I'm working off two monitors.
So please forgive me if I'm not making eye contact with all
of you over the internet today.
Our resources are best explained, I think,
if we sort of put them in four separate categories.
And you'll find that these are laid out
in nearly the same fashion on our website
to try to make it easier for you depending on, again,
what stage you might be in and what
you're trying to accomplish.
We've got tools to help you prepare for your career search
and looking for a specific job.
We have a lot of tools and social media communities
to help you build your BU network.
And as I'll talk about soon, I think
that's where, really, BU can offer the most value to you
and add the most value to your life
in helping you build a strong network.
We do have a couple of specific resources
to help you find open positions on the job market.
And then lastly, I also want to talk
about the importance of building an alumni community
culture that supports each other by talking about ways that you,
today, can give back and help kind of pay it forward.
So let's get started.
And again, I'll try to keep an eye on the Q&A as we go here.
Feel free to jump in at any time with questions.
It looks like we haven't had anything yet,
so that's wonderful.
So what we're going to do--
I'm going to talk briefly about all the things
that are listed on the slides here, and then as I said,
we will jump over to the live web
so you can see some of these things.
First and foremost, in terms of preparing yourself, many of you
maybe have been working for a long time
and haven't been on the job market.
You might be surprised to find that things change from maybe
how you used to do it.
You know, back in the day, we all
heard about those days of spraying and praying
your resume all over the place.
And one of the things we know now
is that being much more targeted and purposeful in your job
search is the way to go.
So first and foremost, you already all
know about our career webinar series
because you're participating today.
But these are online presentations that we do
a couple of times a month-- generally twice,
sometimes three--
all with the goal of talking about some great topic.
And all of our webinars are conducted by BU alumni.
Some of them are career coaches.
Some of them are industry professionals
with some real expertise to share.
But these are available to you wherever you might be.
As long as you have a good internet connection.
And, of course, the majority of them are recorded
and we make them available in an on-demand library.
We do very basic career progression topics, you know.
How to nail your next interview.
How to-- someone who's already asked about ageism.
I'm not going to talk a lot about ageism today, that's
not the goal of this webinar, but we do have a webinar
on our library about strategies that you
can use, maybe as an older alum for making yourself marketable.
So take a look.
Stephanie [inaudible] in our library
you'll find some resources about how to combat ageism.
Our next webinar, just so you all know,
is going to be an industry insider.
Several times a year we ask industry professionals
to offer topics that might not speak to the masses of BU
alumni community, but certainly specific industries
where I know we have a lot of alumni working.
And on February 28th, we've got a great alum
who is a lawyer who is going to be doing--
for anybody who works in the health care or health
related field-- if you're in a tech startup that addresses,
kind of, the health care industry,
Cal Stein is our speaker.
He's going to be doing a presentation
about the basics of the law that you need to know.
And health is the highest regulated industry
by the government.
And so he's going to be doing some things that, if you're
in the care industry, you really should know about these things.
[coughs]
Excuse me.
Question that's come in from Sonya.
Do you have resources that especially
targeted to entrepreneurs and self-employed alumni?
We've certainly done a lot of webinars on the topic.
One of the things we're going to be doing in March,
also, is a new online class.
Much like a webinar series, but it's
going to be three parts with a couple different speakers
talking about entrepreneurship for alumni over 50.
And how to make use of some resources
that are available to you.
Again, Sonya, take a look at our website
after we go through the presentation today
and I think you'll see some things there.
Particularly, again, around networking,
which we know for entrepreneurs incredibly important.
Something I'm really excited about that's new this year.
We recently launched in November the Proud to BU podcast.
For those of you who are podcast fans,
I think you'll enjoy this.
It's a 30-minute interview with an alum who's gone on to really
interesting or--
have a lot of success in their career.
We've already released 16 episodes.
I've had the chance to talk to working actors, NASA engineers,
you know, global marketing executives,
an alum who has his own company doing documentary film
work for WGBH.
Some really interesting stuff.
So I definitely encourage you to check that out.
I'll show you where to find it on our website.
But you can find this podcast wherever
you listen to podcasts.
On Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify.
It's all there for you.
Just look for Proud to BU.
I will ask that if you download and listen to the podcast,
please give us a rating and a nice review.
That helps us go a long way in reaching a bigger audience.
And then lastly, I want to make sure
that you know I don't work for the career center.
I work for the Alumni Relations office.
But we work very closely with the BU Center for Career
Development and some of the individual school and college
career centers.
You as an alum of the university have
access to all the resources offered
by the CCD and associated school and college centers.
And so many of them are also offering workshops and events
that you can attend.
You also have the ability to have a one-on-one career
coaching session.
I'm not a career coach.
I don't meet individually with alumni,
although I'm, of course, welcome and happy to answer
your questions as they come up.
Now, some of you, if you've graduated more than two years
ago, there might be a small fee for a one-on-one coaching
or counseling appointment, but I think it's somewhere
in the neighborhood of $25.
And I think that those of you who are currently unemployed
or underemployed who've maybe looked into some coaching
before, that's pennies on the dollar for what you would
pay on the private market.
And you didn't hear it from me, but in many cases
if you're really experiencing financial hardship they'll
waive that for you.
But again, all alumni have access to one-on-one counseling
sessions with the Center for Career Development
and some really talented and dedicated staff
that work there.
And I mentioned, those of you who
graduated from COM, Engineering, Questrom, School of Medicine,
School of Law, the School of Hospitality Administration,
or the School of Public Health.
All of those schools and colleges
have individual resources that you can check out as well.
So let's take a look at our website.
I'm going to jump over to the web.
And I would ask if--
when I jump back and forth, sometimes I
get caught up in making the transitions.
So those of you who have access to the chat or the Q&A,
if for some reason I am talking about something that doesn't
show up on your screen, please let
me know so I can make that adjustment.
So this is bu.edu/alumni.
It's a great resource to find out
about all the benefits and events and things
you have access to as an alum.
And you'll notice there right on the left, that's
our main navigating menu.
And there's a section there just for careers.
So by clicking on Careers, it's going to take you
to our careers landing page.
You'll see at the bottom that there are some quick shortcuts
to some of the things that we're going
to be talking about today.
But quite frankly, everything that we're
going to be talking about is on the-- now, there's
another menu on the right hand side
to navigate some of these pieces.
But if you click on Career Development Resources,
you'll find this is where we've got everything laid out
under Prepare, Network, and Find a Job.
And there's an entire section just for our webinars.
If you click on that page, you'll see--
apologize.
It's a bit outdated.
We'll get that corrected soon.
But at the top of the page, you'll
see all of the webinars we have coming up
that you can sign up for.
And then underneath that, webinars on demand.
So again, the majority-- not all-- but most of the webinars
we've done over the last four or five years
are all available to you.
You can search by category, or you
can click on View All Webinars, and that's
going to bring up our YouTube playlist where you
can see literally everything.
So that's a really great thing to check out.
I also mentioned the podcast.
You'll see a link to that right here.
Go over to the podcast landing page.
And if you don't currently listen
to podcasts on a mobile device, you
can listen to them right here on our website.
All 16 episodes you'll see are right here.
We recently interviewed an author and entrepreneur
who's got a really popular social media following.
Senior vice president of a global PR firm.
A tech founder in San Francisco.
This was-- I had a really amazing conversation
with Mary Beth Leonard who is US Ambassador to the African
Union.
So a great way to maybe-- if you're
going to get on the treadmill or you've got a 30-minute commute
home at the end of the day, check it out.
I'm really excited about it.
And then lastly, we mentioned the Center
for Career Development.
You're going to want to go to bu.edu/careers.
And that's the Center for Career Development's landing page.
And you'll notice right up at the top there's
a whole menu just for alumni.
Click on that.
It'll give you a lot of detail about the things
that are available to you and how you can access them,
including some of the things that we're going
to dive into more detail later.
I should also mention, as I move back over to our slide deck
here, I'm going to send this out to everybody has a PDF
after the webinar is over.
So you'll have a bunch of these direct links right
to the individual tools that I'm talking about as we go.
Any questions about any of those things under prepare yourself--
the webinar series, the podcast, the CCD--
before we move on?
Great.
OK.
As I mentioned, everybody will tell you
if you're looking for a job, or if you're not even
looking for a job, the importance of having
a strong network.
We have some specific ways to navigate that just
within the BU alumni community that I'm
excited to tell you about.
There are statistics out there that 70% of jobs now today
are not ever even listed publicly.
That it's all because of a connection.
You knew somebody who knew somebody
who knew somebody who had an opening before it even got
posted.
And I, you know, don't claim to be an expert,
but I would agree that this is one of the best things
that you can do to invest in your career is to get out
there, make connections with people,
and also help make connections for other people
that sometimes can come back to you.
Karma is a wonderful thing as you're looking for a job.
The first resource I want to talk about
is bolded because I think this is really
the centerpiece of what we offer.
It's called the BU Career Advisory Network.
It's little more than an extension of the online alumni
directory that you all have access to as an alum once you
log into our website.
But this is-- the network is 7,861 alumni advisors who
raised their hand and said that they wanted to make themselves
available to other alumni and students for advice,
networking, job shadowing, graduate school
conversations, resume reviews, long term mentoring.
And again, you know, in building a network,
it's frustrating because you feel like you're cold
calling people all the time.
Well, think of this as a warm call.
These are people who have said that they want to be helpful.
There is a login process.
We'll go over that briefly when I show it to you.
But this is something all of you, I think,
should make sure to check out today, immediately after we
end the webinar.
I'm going to show you places on our website to find
about networking events.
There are nearly 1,000 events that
are run by Boston University alumni
around the globe every year.
And many of them are specifically about networking.
Sometimes it's about getting a beer after work.
Sometimes it's about attending a workshop that's specifically
designed to help you meet other people.
But I'll show you the place on our website
to make sure that you know about all those things in addition
to your email.
I want to mention also, the zip code we have on file for you
in the alumni office is the key to making sure
that you're hearing about events that
are happening in your area.
We're very conscious about not over-emailing our alumni.
Many of you who live in the Boston area
are probably getting a lot of emails from us.
Those of you who live in Pflugerville, Texas
probably don't get quite as many emails.
But if we know where you live, we'll
make sure that you only hear about events that are happening
in your area, or other things that
might be of interest to you.
I mentioned some of the communities around the globe.
We'll talk briefly about ways that you can get connected
to alumni near where you live.
We've got alumni living in every country around the world.
We'll talk about how to find those folks a little bit.
[coughs]
Excuse me for one second because I have a glass of water.
This might be a great time to ask
some questions that you have.
One of the things I love to ask alumni about
is their use of LinkedIn.
Whenever I've got a room full of alumni--
Sandra asked a great question.
How do you update the preferred contact email on file?
I'll show you on our website where
you can go to update your profile
and make sure that we have the correct contact info for you.
Thank you, Sandra.
Great question.
With LinkedIn, whenever I'm in a room full of alumni,
I say, how many of you are on LinkedIn?
And every hand goes up.
And then I say, how many of you know what to do with it?
And maybe one or two out of the total go up.
LinkedIn's one of those things everybody
tells you you have to be on, but then you get there
and you're like, OK.
What do I do now?
There's a couple specific things I want to show you that I think
might be helpful, including one that often just makes brains
explode when I tell them that it's there
and people have never heard of.
The alumni search tool.
We'll cover that in a second.
We also have a relatively new BU alumni app
that is available for download for-- it's mobile only right
now for Apple and Android products.
And it puts the power of LinkedIn
and the alumni online directory in your mobile device.
And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
So let's switch back over to the web.
OK.
Back to the careers section.
And career development resources.
And you'll see that there is a link for the Career Advisory
Network.
Again, this is the online database of nearly 8,000 alumni
who have offered help.
You'll want to read this information.
It tells you a little bit more about what
the purpose of the Career Advisory Network is.
As I'll ask you later, we also want you
to add yourself as an advisor.
Even if you've only been out of school for a couple of years,
chances are you might work at a company
or have contacts at a company that other students might
find useful.
So definitely make sure that you sign up.
But to log in, if you've graduated since 2009,
you should be able to get in today
using your BU Kerberos [inaudible]
username and Kerberos password.
If you graduated before that, you'll
actually have to create an alumni online profile.
And I can show you where to do that on the web.
I should mention, you're seeing a different version
because I have administrator rights,
but the basics are the same.
Once you've logged in--
once you attempt to log in--
you'll put your information in here--
we ask everybody every time they log in
to go over these four tips for networking,
just to make sure that people are using the Career Advisory
Network, or the CAN, the right way.
And we'll go into detail on that in a couple seconds.
But basically, once you log in, you'll
see that you can search by all of these different parameters.
If you're looking for a contact at a specific company,
you can put that in here.
If you're looking to be, you know, director level and above,
you can search different job titles.
There's a giant list of different occupations
that you can search through.
If you're looking to connect specifically
with alumni who attended your specific BU school or college,
you can do that.
You can search by class year.
You can search by what degree they got here.
Searching by location is a little bit funky,
and so we'll talk about that in a second.
But then also, obviously, if you're
looking to see if an alumni that you know specifically
has volunteered for the Career Advisory Network,
you can search them by name.
And then this is important.
You can also search through the types of assistance
that our CAN advisors are willing to offer.
One-time career conversations.
Long-term mentoring.
Resume review.
Informational interviews.
Grad school discussions.
Job shadowing.
And then you can also search by how those folks are
willing to connect with you.
Scrolling back up to Search By Location,
like any internet search, I would
advise you to start broadly and narrow your search down
from there.
So for example, if you know that you're
looking for alumni in the Boston area,
the way that our system works, you have to type
in the name of the city.
There's not a dropdown box.
I'm sure you can all understand why.
Sometimes our alumni make spelling errors
or they might work in Boston but live in Framingham.
And so I would recommend for any search that you start by state.
This would definitely go for New York City
where people might put Brooklyn instead of New York.
That kind of thing.
So start by state and then narrow it down from there.
So one of the examples I use quite a bit-- here in Boston,
we have a large number of alumni who work at Fidelity.
So by putting Fidelity in the search box
and just leaving it there, I can see all of the alumni globally
who volunteered who either now or in the past have
worked at Fidelity.
And you can see that my search returned 25 members.
Now, we've got people here in New Jersey.
We've got people in--
there's got to be another state here.
New Hampshire.
We've got somebody who is a project manager in Switzerland.
That's because I didn't put in a location.
So if I'm looking for somebody that I'd
like to meet in person, that's when I want
to add Fidelity and a location.
Or, you know, specifically what they studied.
That kind of thing.
I see we've got some questions that have come in.
I'm wondering if they are about the Career Advisory Network.
Paul's asked a question about how to connect
with alumni in certain cities.
We'll go over that in just a second.
But certainly this Career Advisory Network
is a great way to do that if you just
were to type in London or the UK,
it'll give you a bunch of Career Advisory Network advisors.
Sue has asked, how do you respond to the biased racism,
sexism, and ageism that occurs?
You might have heard me mention this
at the top of the webinar, that's
not what I'm covering today.
I'm just doing a guided tour of the resources available to you
as a BU alum.
But if you check out our on-demand library,
then you'll see that we have a number of presentations that
cover those kind of topics.
If you don't have any questions about the Career Advisory
Network, I am going to then show you--
let's go back to the alumni home page.
If you go to Community, this is a place
to find alumni near you.
Scrolling down a little bit, or even on the right hand side
here, you click on Alumni Near You.
And this will bring up a map showing
you places where alumni have told us that they
live around the world.
And what I can tell you is that the top three
cities that our alumni live in are certainly
Boston, or the Boston area, New York City, and then
Washington DC.
We also have very large alumni populations
in the California Bay Area in Los Angeles, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Miami.
Internationally, our alumni population is exploding.
We have large alumni networks thriving in China, the UK,
India, Turkey, and others.
So using this tool on our website,
you oftentimes can click on a place like, let's say--
OK.
So Madrid.
You can see here that we have a local alumni contact.
Julianna Pereira is living in Madrid
and has offered to be a point of resource for you.
So this is a great thing if you're
looking to make connections as some folks have asked about.
If you don't like the map view, you can also do a list view.
You'll find that this list view is
more helpful in some of the larger alumni cities
that I talked about, or states.
But certainly for those of you who are working, traveling,
or living abroad, this is a great way
to find out, sort of, and identify
BU alumni contacts near you.
OK.
Let's take a look at LinkedIn.
A great way-- well, let's do this.
I don't know if I'm logged in or not, but I will log in quickly.
I am.
OK.
A great way to get started networking with BU on LinkedIn
is to just start by searching Boston University
in the upper right hand corner.
The first thing I want to tell you about--
let me back up for a second.
LinkedIn is obviously a really important tool
for any job search or career.
And so, again, in our online on-demand webinar library,
you'll find a ton of great presentations
specifically about LinkedIn.
About designing your profile, about how to reach out
to people, some other things.
So definitely make sure you check that out.
But there are two specific things
I want to tell you about on LinkedIn.
One of them is the Boston University Alumni Group.
And just by searching Boston University,
it'll hopefully show you that there is an alumni group.
Our logo isn't functioning today, or at least not
on my browser.
But this is the official LinkedIn group
of Boston University.
We have just over 40,000 members who have joined.
And as you'll see, we have a pretty active community.
People who have read interesting articles that
relate to their careers will post those.
People who have moved to-- we'll certainly talk about some
of the upcoming webinars on our LinkedIn group
so you make sure to see those.
People talk about great professional networking
opportunities that are coming up.
Different conferences.
A lot of times, alumni will use this-- many of you
have mentioned, you know, relocating.
Trying to connect with alumni in a new city.
One of the things I love seeing is
when an alum moves to a new city and says,
hey, I've recently relocated to--
this person.
I'm going to be interviewing for a job in Midland, Michigan
and just looking for advice.
Lots of times when people move to a new city,
this is a great way to put up a post introducing yourself,
letting people know the ways in which
you're looking to make some connections
in a specific industry, a specific function.
That's what this group is for and people
are using it all the time.
Almost most importantly, though, one of the things I love seeing
is when--
we're asking all alumni to do this.
When they know of an open position in their company,
to post it within the group.
You can see that Patrick Hansen has done this here
for-- he's got open positions in Somerville Mass looking
for software engineers.
So a great place to look for open jobs.
Also, please do share positions in your company,
or if you know of other places that are hiring.
I love it to see when alumni post that here.
There used to be a separate tab just for jobs on the LinkedIn
group, but LinkedIn recently made some changes to groups.
And so now they're all integrated into this group
membership feed.
You also have the ability to view
the other members of the group.
And again, these are all people who've
joined specifically with the goal of building a strong BU
network.
And so definitely feel free to check that out.
You can also search if you're looking
to see if an alumni you know is a member.
If they're not, please extend an invitation to them.
Secondly, and this is the--
OK.
Yeah.
Sure.
Let's see if there are questions that came in about LinkedIn.
Sandra's asking about the $25 fee.
I thought access to BU's career center
advising is for alumni for a lifetime.
You have access to it for life, but there
is a fee for alumni who've graduated
more than two years ago.
And again, as I had said earlier,
you'll find that for a one-on-one hour
long appointment with a professional career coach, $25
is very, very short money.
And again, if you let them know about financial hardships,
chances are--
you didn't hear it from me-- but they're probably
going to waive that fee.
Kristen.
On LinkedIn, is there a way to search for specific fields
in jobs posted on the feed?
Search for-- no.
OK.
You're wondering if there's a way
to search through the discussion posts on the official alumni
LinkedIn group.
No.
I don't believe there's a way to do that.
You're just going to have to try to keep an eye out
from time to time--
I would suggest-- again, LinkedIn's made a lot
of changes that I find really frustrating in the last couple
years.
And one of them--
your question is a good one.
I might just try to set a reminder on my calendar
to take a look at the group once a week
to see if anything new has been posted because there really
isn't a way to sort of subscribe to specific topics
of conversation or discussion within a group.
But a totally fair question.
OK.
Lots of questions here about LinkedIn.
[inaudible], great question.
Is it considered bad form to post--
considered bad form to post on a BU alumni LinkedIn group
that you're looking for new employment opportunities?
No.
I think the group is what our alumni want it to be,
and I think to say, hey, you know,
I've had these kinds of experiences in this field
and I'm looking for new opportunities.
If anybody's interested, please let me know.
I don't think it's bad form at all.
I think you want to make sure that you're professional
and that you're sort of saying, you know--
I would not recommend that you sort of say, I need a new job.
Can anybody help?
Those are the kinds of posts that don't get responses.
But if you say, you know, here's the experience I've had,
here's the value that I can add to your company.
If you know of anything, please let me know.
Those are the kinds of posts that our alumni respond to,
and I wouldn't consider it to be bad form.
A question about can other LinkedIn contacts
see what you post on the alumni page?
If they're a member of the group, yes.
It's a private group.
When you ask to join, we do check to make sure
that you're a BU alum.
But if somebody else is a member of the BU community,
they would be able to see that.
Caitlyn, I'm not going to comment about LinkedIn Premium.
I would encourage you to check out
some of our other on-demand webinars
specifically about LinkedIn.
We've had a lot of career coaches
weigh in on that over the years.
Great question from an alum.
Can I search for BU alumni who are working in strategy
consulting, specifically?
Great segue.
Thank you.
I couldn't have paid you.
So on the LinkedIn page, again, up in the search box,
type in Boston University again.
And you will see that Boston University has something
that's called a school page.
It's kind of like a combination of the old education
pages and a company page.
But by clicking on the school page,
this'll bring up Boston University's official profile.
Again, this is not BU alumni's group.
It's Boston University's profile.
You'll see a lot of updates, discussion threads, same thing.
But this is, to me, the real--
this is the thing that'll make your brain explode.
By clicking on Alumni on the left hand side here,
this brings up the alumni search tool.
And as long as you have Boston University
in your educational history on your own LinkedIn profile,
you'll be able to see this.
But what this brings up is a way to search--
again to your question, Kristen--
a way to search just amongst Boston University alumni
in varying ways.
Now, it's a little bit like the Career Advisory Network
except these are not people who've raised their hand.
These are people who have BU listed
on their educational history, and that's
why they're included in this search.
So it's a little bit different.
By searching through alumni here and then contacting them,
that'd be a little bit more like that cold call
that I was talking about.
But you can see here on the screen,
you can search through alumni by-- and up at the top here,
because I have set my search dates
to start very early on and end this year,
so I'm searching through all alumni.
If you're looking to search through alumni that
are your own age, or might have been at BU the same time
as you, you can restrict the years
that you're searching from.
But you can search by alumni by where they live,
where they work, and then this next button
is incredibly important.
What they do, what they studied, and then, most importantly,
in addition to what they're skilled at, how
you might be connected.
And so Stephanie's example--
or Kristen's example-- no, Sandra's--
I might have-- where are you?
Sorry, strategy consulting.
You could do a search just by clicking on What They Do.
And it's helpful if you expand this at the bottom to--
this way I can-- of the 215,136 alumni
who are on LinkedIn, who list BU in their educational history,
I can see that there are 7,134 alumni who
have listed consulting amongst the things that they do.
And from there, I could narrow it down by where they work.
So if I wanted to see people who are doing consulting
at Fidelity, I click on that.
And that'll bring up, literally, this list of alumni
who I can then connect with.
And then, most importantly, again,
as I said, scrolling over to the right,
I can see oh, I have 17 alumni who
work in consulting for Fidelity that I
have a third-degree connection for
or higher within the United States.
14 of them are here in Boston.
So this is a great way to find somebody
that you might be connected to who's connected to the person
that you'd really like to connect with.
Ask them for an introduction.
Or just connect with them on LinkedIn here.
Now, when I clicked Connect, it's
going to prompt you to add a customized note.
I 150% recommend that you always do that.
I don't know how many of you have ever been contacted
by somebody on LinkedIn.
They want to connect with you, and you have no idea why.
This is a great way to explain that.
Hey, I saw that you want to BU and also
work at Fidelity in consulting.
I am interested in strategy consulting positions
and would love to hear about your experience.
Make it about them.
OK.
Any questions about the alumni search tool?
I'll give it a second.
I'm going a little bit more long-winded
than I had planned on.
So we might have to rush to get through the rest
of the things in an hour here.
But again, this to me is one of the most important pieces
of the things that we offer you.
OK.
I'm going to move on.
Get back to my slides here for a second.
And lastly, I want to follow a little bit about the alumni
app.
Again, there's a really powerful feature
that combines LinkedIn profiles with information we
have in the alumni directory.
I can't show you how the app works because right now it's
mobile only.
They are going to be coming up with a desktop version.
But this is an example.
I did it just a search for alumni--
and I should mention, it automatically
is giving you alumni who have listed a business address.
And so by doing a search for New York City,
I was able to-- it literally shows--
you can pull up a map view and zoom in
on whatever neighborhood you might want to be in.
And if you know that you're moving to London
and are looking to make some connections,
you can pull up London on your phone,
zoom in to where you might be living or working,
and then search through Terriors.
This is obviously a shot of lower Manhattan.
I can see that it's showing the only 97 of 16,000 results.
New York, again, is the place where a lot of alumni live.
We have done an entire webinar just
about how to use the app for networking.
And that is, of course, available, again,
in our on-demand library right on our website.
So I definitely encourage you all,
if you're interested in using the app, to check that out.
OK.
[coughs]
Excuse me.
Very quickly, I also did another webinar
that was all about building a strong network using BU alumni
tools.
I encourage you to check that out.
But this is sort of the gist of what I want
to make sure that you know.
When you reach out to another alum to build your network,
make sure that you're making it about them.
Ask them for advice.
Ask them for information.
Ask them to hear about their experience.
Don't contact them and say, I'm looking
for a job in strategy consulting.
Contact them and say, wow, you've
had this really successful strategy consulting career.
I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee
and hear more about how you got where you are.
Once you've built that relationship with them,
that's when you can let them know that you're
looking for new opportunities.
In everything that you do, be purposeful and professional.
If you're going to reach out to somebody on LinkedIn,
again, make sure you tell them specifically
what it is that you want to learn from them
or why you've reached out to them.
And, you know, don't use slang.
You know, if you don't know somebody well
and they're a little bit older, maybe
to call them Mr. or Ms. Third, engage
in responsible networking.
Obviously, you know, don't spam somebody
100 times if they haven't gotten back to you.
If somebody agrees to meet with you,
you know, make sure you do that in a public place
if it's somebody you haven't met before.
That's obviously-- the safety of our alumni
is always of concern.
Those kinds of things.
And then lastly, this is a no brainer,
I know, for many of you.
Make sure that you let-- if somebody agrees
to talk with you on the phone, send them a quick email saying,
thanks so much for your time.
If somebody gives you an hour of their time
over lunch, that might, you know,
call for a handwritten thank you note that you send them
immediately afterwards.
As I mentioned, there's an entire webinar
that dives really in-depth about how
to be smart and successful in trying to build a BU network.
It's called Unleash the Power of Your BU Network,
and it's available on our website.
OK.
Lastly-- and we're really talking about one very specific
resource here.
But there are ways that BU can be helpful to you
in finding open positions.
And what I'm really talking about is BU Handshake.
BU Handshake is our primary place
for posting jobs just to be seen by the Boston University
community.
And that means alumni and students.
You, as an alum, have access to Handshake.
You'll need to register for it by going to the website--
the Center for Career Development website.
What I can tell you is that yesterday I did a search
and there were 8,223 open full-time positions that
were posted on BU Handshake.
And again, those are companies that are specifically
targeting BU alumni.
There are also--
Handshake is really-- it's more than a job board.
It's really a career management tool.
You have the ability to upload your resume, apply
for jobs directly from the Handshake site,
or also it might give you directions for how
to apply in a more formal way.
There is also a calendar of events
that you have access to as an alum.
And I would definitely recommend, with anything
with the Center for Career Development,
you might want to contact them.
Sometimes their events are really
designed more for students who haven't
had any full-time experience.
But many of the things that they do are open to you
as a BU alum.
We'll take a look at Handshake in a second.
I mentioned, again, on the BU alumni LinkedIn group,
people are constantly posting open positions.
We also have-- mostly on Twitter--
but we're also asking alumni to share open positions
using the #HireBU.
We talked about that a little bit in number seven
with LinkedIn and social media.
And then lastly, again, we already
talked about career events.
But there are very specific events
that you have access to as an alum that are
totally about finding a job.
Most of those are in the Boston area.
For example, on February 13th, the Center
for Career Development is inviting all the alumni
to attend their all university career fair.
The Center for Career Development and many
of our individual schools and colleges
regularly host employer information sessions
where companies will come to campus to recruit.
And you very regularly have access to those as well.
Let's take a look really quickly at Handshake.
I can show you where to access that and log in.
Going back to the web here.
I'm going to move over from--
back to the Center for Career Development's page.
Hang on a second.
Here we go.
You should be able to see that now.
OK.
So back on the For Alumni page and the Center for Career
Developments website.
Click on Handshake.
And you can see here, if you've not ever accessed Handshake,
here's where to request a new Handshake account.
But I'll go ahead and log in and just
give you sort of a guided tour.
I logged in yesterday, so it automatically logged me in.
It's obviously highlighting upcoming events.
It's going to give me a highlight of jobs
that have posted soon.
I should say, I haven't completely
filled out my profile on this, but the Handshake system
allows you to fill out a complete profile so that you're
only seeing information that's really tailored
to your interests and needs.
And so specifically, if you're looking at strategy consulting,
once you fill out your profile, it's
going to start to show me positions from organizations
that I might be interested in.
But again, to me, the big thing up at the top here,
under Jobs, I have the ability to do a job search based
on keywords that I might be interested in, you know,
specific companies.
But here it's showing me that, you know,
this is looking at both part-time, full-time,
internships.
And they're-- right now, just for BU,
there's 13,915 positions that are listed.
So a great, tremendous resource.
[coughs]
Excuse me.
A couple of quick things I want to mention,
and then we'll get into all of your questions.
I'm very glad that those of you who've participated today
have done so because this is intended
to build some interest.
Every year during the month of March
we do something called Alumni Career Weeks where,
not only myself, but the entire alumni relations team
and volunteers around the globe are making sure
that all of our alumni have access to some great career
resources and events.
And so as of today, I know that there's
going to be at least 25 in-person networking
opportunities in cities around the globe,
with more to be added.
But you can take a look at all the things we've got now.
Events that are online.
Workshops.
Panel discussions.
And again, specific networking events
happening in cities near you.
You can take a look at bu.edu/careerweeks.
We're really excited.
Last year we ended up having somewhere
in the neighborhood of 60 different events
through the month of March.
And so it's a great way, again, if you're
looking to make some connections,
if you're looking for jobs in your town, great resource
to get involved with.
Very quickly, lastly, you know, you-- even
as an unemployed alum, those of you
who said you're unemployed or underemployed,
there are things that you can still
do to help create the kind of community
that I think that we all envision for BU alumni.
A group of people that are there to help each other.
When you see somebody who's applied
for a job in your company, if you've
noticed that they've gone to BU, maybe you
give that resume a second look.
That's the kind of community I'm hoping to inspire.
But things that you all can do now, again,
post an opportunity using the #HireBU.
If you see somebody tweeting about an open job,
put it back up with that hashtag.
All of you have experience to draw
on that makes you somebody we'd really
want to be a CAN advisor, you can sign up today
to do that and be there to help other people
when they need you.
Particularly, our students.
We talked about joining the LinkedIn group.
We'd love to have you share your wisdom.
Answer when somebody posts a question about how
do I handle this interview negotiation, please
respond to those.
You've got a wealth of experience to draw on.
Asking your employer to become an official recruiter
for Boston University on Handshake
is something that you can do that's really valuable.
And then, lastly, you know, a lot of our students
wouldn't be here without scholarships,
and certainly making a gift to the BU scholarship
of your choosing, or your school or college,
is a great way to pay it forward.
OK.
Let's get to questions.
A lot of you have been just typing in
to say thanks and good info.
I appreciate that.
I know I've gone very quickly.
But I wanted to make sure we got through everything that we
could.
So OK.
Great question.
Where are the jobs posted on Handshake pulled from?
Is it from Idealist job boards?
The short answer to the question is everywhere.
Now, there are some, sort of, things
like Idealist and other job boards that feed automatically,
but again, the primary place that they're coming from
is by people who've signed up to be official recruiters
for Boston University.
And so they are pulling jobs from a lot of places,
but again, many of them are specifically targeted just
for Boston University.
Really good question.
Answered that one.
I answered this one.
Thank you, John, for saying good info.
Vince has asked a question.
Using this page on LinkedIn, do the searches of alumni
go against the LinkedIn commercial use limit?
That's a good question, Vince.
I don't exactly know the answer to that.
But if you're talking about using the alumni search tool,
what I can tell you is I use it all the time
and I've never run--
I don't know what the search limit might be.
I apologize.
I don't know the answer to that.
And I will definitely try to find out.
Vince, if you want to follow up with me,
you can see my email address is on the bottom there.
Great question.
Sorry, I don't know the answer.
Michael's weighed in with some really good advice
that many of you have heard before
in regards to networking.
And when we talked about how to reach out to other alumni
to build your network.
If you ask for a job, you'll get advice.
And if you ask for advice, you'll get a job.
That's a very succinct way of saying what
I was trying to say, Michael.
Thank you for sharing that.
OK.
One of the things I neglected to mention--
Michael's asked about having difficulty logging
into the alumni website.
Let me show you quickly on our website--
go back to the BU alumni website.
OK.
I'm going to go to Community.
I'm going to click on Alumni App and Directory.
And then you can see on the right hand side here
a tool has popped up to update your information.
That'd be a great place to give us your correct address and zip
code, the email you want us to communicate with you.
You can tell us a little about the types
of emails you want to get.
And then also.
Michael, down here, if you're not already connected and have
access to the alumni directory and the Career Advisory Network
on our website, you're going to need to sign up for an account.
And it walks you through that process.
Those of you who-- and I'll be honest with you.
Technology today never works as we want it to.
For those of you who have trouble logging into the alumni
website, feel free to let me know.
I'll get you sorted out with our--
we have an alumni help desk that can help you
if you run into issues.
If you don't remember your BU ID number, those kinds of things.
Again, I'm at jtmurphy@bu.edu.
I might not be able to give back to you right away,
but I will get back to you.
Sign up with the Alumni Association.
Monica's asked-- it seems like a silly question,
but it's not, Monica-- about how do you know if you signed up
with the Alumni Association?
First of all, all of you are members
of the Alumni Association.
It's not a membership--
there's no fee to be a member of the Alumni Association.
All alumni are members.
You'll just need to check and see
if you're able to log into the site or not.
Again, if you've graduated since 2009,
you should be able to log in using your BU username
and Kerberos password.
We've figured out how to make it easy since, you know,
for the last 10 years.
But for those of you who graduated before then,
there's a little bit of a process.
We need to make sure that you are who you say you are,
so we'll collect some information from you,
see what we have on you in our records,
and then either let you know what we need.
Maria, you've asked a really good question.
If I have a new website, blog, or podcast
that might be of interest to alumni,
can I post this on BU LinkedIn?
You can post it if you are a member of the Boston University
Alumni LinkedIn group, and I would encourage
you to do that, absolutely.
Particularly if you think it's got some angle that
relates to people's careers.
If it's a cooking blog, I'm not sure that's
why people would join the BU Alumni LinkedIn group.
I mean, LinkedIn really is about professional networking.
That might be more appropriate for Facebook,
to tweet it out, and, you know, mention @BUalumni
in the handle.
But if there's a career angle to it,
I absolutely encourage you to post that.
But be thoughtful, you know.
Don't post once a week about the same thing.
Those are the kinds of posts that, quite frankly,
we try to delete out and sometimes
let people know when they're kind of abusing
the community by spamming.
But a really good question.
Thank you for asking.
[inaudible] asked, do professional recruiters
have access to the BU alumni tools for searching for jobs?
Paul, I'm not exactly sure I understand that question.
Certainly professional recruiters
can sign up to recruit on Handshake in the Post Jobs.
Oh, if somebody who is a BU alum is now
working as a professional recruiter,
we would give that person--
we would grant them permission to join the BU alumni
group on LinkedIn.
If they are not an alum, they would not get permission
to join the BU alumni group.
So I think from time to time we do
have BU alumni who work as recruiters who post something
in the BU alumni group.
I don't see it a ton.
Mostly, it's just alumni who want
to be supportive of the alumni community have
[inaudible] posting open jobs on the LinkedIn group.
Paul, if I didn't understand your question,
feel free to write back and ask it a different way.
William, you're asking again where Handshake is located.
Again, if you go to the Center for Career
Development's website, that's bu.edu/careers,
and then go to For Alumni, you'll see a link
for Handshake.
Handshake is plastered all over that CCD website.
If you still have trouble finding it, email me.
John, you've asked a really good question.
As an alum entrepreneur, how can I
use the alumni network to promote my business
to fellow alumni?
You've asked a delicate one.
Now, certainly as a member of the community,
I want to make sure that you have an opportunity
to let alumni know about your business.
But again, we want to make sure that you're not spamming
the alumni community or--
we want to make sure that you're adding value to the alumni
network, and not just looking to, you know,
get clients out of it.
You'll see that when people--
related to the question about posting your blog
on the LinkedIn group.
When people start to abuse the group,
that's when it starts to get reported by other users who
are, quite frankly, saying, OK.
You're not really here to add value to the community.
You're really here just to get clients.
And so I would encourage you, if you're
excited that you've launched a new venture, to say,
hey, I'm a proud BU alum from the class of 1997.
I've just launched my business, and I'm really
excited to let other alumni know about it.
If you've got questions, contact me.
I think that's great.
Again, don't do it once a week.
Be respectful and, you know, be a part of the community,
not just to get business from the community.
I think the same thing goes for our in-person networking
events.
I think you should be proud to come and talk
about the businesses that you've started
as an entrepreneur and the kinds of folks
that you're looking to connect with.
But I think once you're at the predatory, that's when
it becomes a problem, you know.
It's all about the way in which you do it.
Great question, though, John.
I appreciate you asking it.
OK.
So you elaborated.
Purely to let everybody know that the business has launched.
Absolutely.
We're so proud of our alumni who've started businesses.
Please feel free to post that in the LinkedIn group.
[inaudible],, as I said, I'm going
to send out a PDF copy of all my slides
with all the links to everybody after this is over today.
I'm glad you found it helpful.
Vince.
I've had the BU alumni app on my phone for some time now.
However, I always get the following message-- pending
affiliation.
A pending affiliation request.
So Vince, sometimes what happens is
if you've changed your name, or changed anything
about you that we don't have on file,
if a request comes through to download the app
or to join the community, but we can't seem to match you up
with the record we had on file for you when
you were a student, sometimes that can hold things up.
It could also quite possibly be just a technical issue.
Vince, go ahead and send me an email today
and we'll get you sorted out.
I want to make sure you get access to that app.
OK.
Any other questions in the box here?
Are there any resources to prepare for Big Three
consulting interviews, for case studies, mock interviews.
I think that's a-- you know, if you're
looking to prepare for Big Three consulting interviews,
I think a great thing to do is use the Career Advisory
Network.
Reach out to somebody who works at one of those firms
and ask them if they would do a mock interview with you.
Again, you can actually search through alumni who've said,
I'll do a mock interview.
LinkedIn is the same thing.
I think if you found somebody-- and I forget who the Big Three
firms are these days.
Maybe Accenture is one of them, if that's what you're
talking about with consulting.
Find alumni who work at Accenture.
You know, if you can find somebody
that you're connected to in a second or third-degree
connection on LinkedIn, I think that's a great reason
to reach out to somebody.
And I'll be honest with you, I think our alumni will be--
they'll feel grateful that they are
being put in a position where they
can be helpful to another alum.
I see a lot of you just writing in to say thanks.
I'm really glad that you're here.
I hope that you found it useful.
Again, if there's something that I didn't quite
answer the way you were hoping I would,
if I didn't provide the level of detail
that you were looking for, or if you're having trouble
accessing any of these resources,
my email's on the screen there.
Feel free to reach out.
And again, we'll get you sorted out as soon as we can.
We've run right up against the hour.
My thanks go out to all of you for participating.
I also want to extend a special thank you to those
of you who've donated to BU.
Your support.
The kinds of career programs that we do
wouldn't be possible without the support of our donors.
And so thank you very much.
I hope that you'll all plan to join us for our upcoming career
events.
We've got webinars coming up in February
and again in March with Alumni Career Weeks.
Some great opportunities there.
I'm always looking for speakers for our webinar series.
So if you, or an alum you know, would
be interested in doing a professional development
or an industry insiders webinar for the alumni community,
please contact me at the email address you see on your screen
now.
Thanks, everybody, for your time.
Have a great day or a great evening, wherever you might be.
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