Online Networking Potential Makes Using LinkedIn Invaluable

The increasing significance and use of social media among those researching business schools and programs was a principal finding of the newly-released QS report, Finding the Right MBA.

In total, 40% of respondents to the survey underpinning the report said they considered social media to be either essential or very important in their business school search.

Using LinkedIn – a social media site aimed squarely at professional online networking – seems particularly suited to a business school audience. After all, establishing and developing a strong network of contacts is a common reason for wanting to undertake an MBA in the first place, according to respondents of the annual QS TopMBA.com Applicant Survey.

From a prospective MBA student’s point of view, using LinkedIn is essential to almost any walk of professional life – so much so that the belief that any new contact made in the real world will have a LinkedIn profile that allows for an easy follow-up connection is often simply taken for granted.

LinkedIn strategy has clear gains for both student and business school

However, the potential gains for business schools with a good LinkedIn strategy in place are perhaps less well documented. With global membership standing at 300 million and now approaching the population of the US (the world’s third-most populous country) the prospects of expanding a school’s reach by tapping into its professionally-minded audience is clear.

By operating a successful LinkedIn strategy business schools can:

• Attract new prospective students.
• Allow greater levels of contact with and between members of its MBA alumni network.
• Bring a wider readership to its faculty’s research.
• Place itself as an authority in business education and research, and rise in the thought leadership stakes.

More than 25% of applicants already access business school info by using LinkedIn

As many as 28% of the report’s global respondents indicated that they were already using LinkedIn to source information about business schools, with take-up higher among the more elevated age-groups involved.

The online networking site scored highest in the US & Canada, where 35% said they use it, although the equivalent figures for Latin America and Europe were both higher than 30%.

With the release of LinkedIn for Education’s specialist institution pages just a year ago, these numbers are likely to climb further in the years to come, as more and more business schools build their own LinkedIn strategy and look for new ways to engage with their audience on the popular platform.

Cornell Johnson reaps benefits from its portfolio

When institution pages were first made available to the online networking site last year, some business schools were quick to sense the opportunity to build a LinkedIn strategy.

One such school was Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management (Cornell Johnson). The school’s interim director of admissions and financial aid, Ann Richards says Cornell Johnson took advantage of the new feature to create not just university pages, but also showcase pages for each of its MBA programs that could be added to its company pages as part of a wide-reaching LinkedIn strategy:

“All employ tailored content strategies to engage prospective students, alumni, corporations and corporate recruiters, and current MBA students,” Richards says of the school’s portfolio of LinkedIn pages, adding that the return it has drawn has been rapid: “In less than a year, we went from zero followers to more than 16,000 across [Cornell] Johnson’s public LinkedIn properties.”   

Similar figures can be found among other leading business schools that are clearly reveling in what they can do with the site, and not just those based in the US.

However, this is still some way behind what the usual suspects of Harvard Business School, Wharton and INSEAD have been able to attract – with all three topping 100,000 followers on their LinkedIn’s institution pages alone.

Gauging the career paths taken by an alumni network

Institution pages also provide an overview of the career paths taken by members of a school’s alumni network registered with the site, which in Cornell Johnson’s case currently amounts to over 12,000 alumni.

This information is useful in itself – to students past, present and future. However, a greater resource for a school’s alumni network is often to be found in private groups, where the benefits of membership are restricted to the students and alumni themselves.

Warwick Business School, for example, has a number of groups and sub-groups at the disposal of its community - something that may come as a result of the attention the school pays to its highly-regarded online MBA – a format where online networking and the virtual exchange of knowledge is an integral part of the student experience.

How might LinkedIn usage evolve?

Considering how much has changed in just the past year, it will be interesting to see how future innovations might see an evolution in the approaches of those business schools using LinkedIn.

Cornell Johnson, for example, recently made headlines for opening up a part of its MBA admissions form to LinkedIn, allowing applicants to transfer over employment and education information directly from their profiles to save time spent on the school’s own online form. 

As Johnson nears its first MBA admissions deadline since then, Richards reveals that applicants have already been using LinkedIn in their applications: “At MBA admissions events, we anecdotally hear candidates say that they appreciate the LinkedIn option.”

It’s a simple innovation, yet one of such convenience that Cornell Johnson expects it to catch on elsewhere – for, as long as a LinkedIn profile is up-to-date, there seems to be no risk attached: “This process does not establish Johnson as a ‘contact’, but simply populates the designated fields,” Richards clarifies.  

Useful as it may be, there is another rationale behind Cornell Johnson’s move; to encourage its students to take advantage of LinkedIn’s online networking resources.

As a social media site designed to promulgate professional connections, it can often help students find new employment opportunities. From a business school’s point of view however, it offers an alternative outlet for building a sense of community between its students and alumni network as well as providing a useful means of engaging with a whole new audience of prospective students and recruiters.