Linking Up On Valentine’s Day

Written by Jacqueline Newell

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a day where people spend lots of time with their loved ones, send cheesy cards and spam your social media news feeds with lovey dovey updates.

My Valentine’s Day 2014 has been a little atypical. The University of Louisville shut down at 2pm as a result of impending weather (it’s raining…), I answered the door when fraternity men brought gifts (they’re obviously for me) and spent the day binging on chocolate.

Earlier this week, a woman at Susquehanna’s Career Development Center gave me the challenge of connecting with 10-15 new people. It seemed simple enough, until I realized that I actually had no idea how to go about it… until now. Introducing, how to search for alumni in 3 easy steps:

1. Search for your respective college or university in the search bar. Look under the grey “universities” tab and select your school

2. Do you see the bold title reading “Explore Careers of [insert number]+ Alumni”? That is where the search really begins. Click on “more,” as shown below.

3. From there, your alumni network is your oyster. LinkedIn gives you six different ways to sort through your alumni network: where they work, where they live, what they do, what they studied, what they are “skilled” at, and how you’re connected.

SU alumni network

Try it out! By clicking on a specific city or company, LinkedIn creates a pool of potential alumni for you to communicate with, located at the bottom.

Now this Valentine’s Day, I’m focusing on myself and my next career move. Maybe today was just the reason I needed to kick start my search.