Finnish colleges and universities receive most of their funding from the state. The amount of funds they are allocated depends, among other things, on the outcome of an annual career follow-up survey. In the hope of improving its results, Hanken School of Economics (Hanken) has been involved in developing a new career follow-up module in Mira CRM.
– Although the results from the career follow-up make up only a relatively small share of the state funding pie, it still plays a role that Hanken is very concerned about. Every alumni who answers can be worth thousands of euros to us. The response rate and also the qualitative employment matter for the funding, i.e. if the alumni have got a job that corresponds to their degree, says Mira Aarnivuo, head of alumni relations and fundraising at Hanken.
Hanken already has good conditions for the annual career follow-ups, thanks in large part to an established work in creating correct contact details and reliable data in its alumni database.
– Having a functioning system to manage your alumni is essential. Without it, we would not be able to have such good data. Our goal is to collect all information that concerns the alumni in the same system. Then we can more easily follow up our activities and continuously improve our data quality and the service towards the alumni. Something that in the long run can have an indirect effect on our financing, says Mira Aarnivuo.
Survey responses affect funding
Hanken receives roughly 70 percent of its funding from the state and the remaining 30 percent from elsewhere. The government funding is based on several key figures, including the results from the survey that is sent to master’s students five years after graduation. The universities also send out a survey to all PhDs, three years after they have completed their dissertation. However, these responses do not affect funding. Hanken also sends out its own survey to its master’s students, six months after graduation – to get a fresh insight into how the studies have prepared the alumni for working life.
When Hanken now brings their survey management into Mira CRM, they can put Excel and Word files aside and also avoid sending via Outlook. Instead, the rough framework for sending out the career questionnaires looks like this:
- State-owned CSC (IT-center for science) creates the survey and also a unique response link for each current alumnus.
- Hanken’s links are imported into Mira CRM, where they are matched with the right person profile.
- The mailing is done via Mira CRM, with a personal link included.
- Then time for follow-up and analysis: who has opened the mailing and who has clicked on its link? Mira Aarnivuo and her colleagues then send out reminders to the people concerned, via Mira CRM.
Better follow-up and analysis
– We are very much looking forward to this year’s mailing via Mira CRM where, among other things, we can have a sender that the alumni recognize, with the same visual appearance as our other alumni mailings. This will hopefully lead to a higher response rate and better opportunities for follow-up and analysis, says Mira Aarnivuo and adds:
– We will also connect the event module to the dispatch. Those who answer the survey are offered the opportunity to participate in a lottery, where we draw notebooks. Those who participate then provide us with their current contact details at the same time, which helps us maintain a higher data quality.
Active alumni work is nothing new for Hanken. Their alumni network has existed for 20 years and Mira Aarnivuo, who has been responsible for the work for almost eight years, says there are many reasons to follow their alumni.
The survey answers provide important feedback
– We are very interested in how our alumni fare in the labor market, and the survey results show whether we are doing the right things. We get important feedback about how they experienced their time as a student and which skills they benefited the most from, which also helps us develop our educational offer, she says.
A basic idea at Hanken is that alumni activities should be highly visible during the course of their studies, in order to make the students familiar with their alumni identity early on. The alumni are guest lecturers, give speeches and participate in Hanken’s board and a number of councils as external members. The investment seems to have succeeded – around 98 percent of Hanken’s students choose to become members of the alumni network, and Hanken wants to protect this.
– I have worked consistently to improve many processes at Hanken. One example is that we automatically ask all graduates if they want to join the alumni network when they apply for their grades, says Mira Aarnivuo and concludes:
– Most of our alumni also choose to join the alumni network already at bachelor’s level, which gives a lower threshold to participate in activities while they are still in the house during their master’s studies. We also ask to get their private email addresses, which ideally won’t change even if they change jobs, resulting in us reaching them better in the long run.
Facts
Hanken School of Economics has 2,600 students, around 16,000 alumni in its alumni network and around 300 employees.
Hanken received very good marks in the 2023 career follow-up survey. Those who responded gave 4.7 out of 6 possible points for their studies – the highest result among all universities in Finland. 95% responded that they were satisfied with their career and 98% would recommend Hanken to other students. The employment rate was also very high, as a full 96% stated that they had a job.
For more information about both Hanken’s and other Finnish higher education institutions’ survey results from 2023: https://vipunen.fi/sv-fi/universitet/Sidor/Uraseuranta.aspx