Graduway
A Powerful Network Providing Career Guidance for Students and Engaging Alumni

With technological innovation occurring at a rapid pace, advancements in the world of EdTech have increased exponentially and altered the way K-12s, colleges and universities operate. In their efforts to prepare students for the professional world, educational institutions are increasingly recognizing the importance of providing students with a career network and access to job and internship opportunities. Once students leave the institution, engaging alumni is top of mind as graduates act as brand ambassadors for their alma mater and more importantly, become potential donors. Aligning alumni relations with career services is one way educational institutions can promote networking beyond the curriculum and have a direct impact on recruitment, rankings and more effective fundraising.

Founded in 2013 by Dr. Marcel Cohen and Daniel Cohen who respectively serve as the company’s Chairman and CEO, Graduway offers students and alumni a streamlined pathway to connections, opportunities and ultimately professional success. Graduway has doubled its headcount over the last 12 months and has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and Canada. Graduway serves over 1,000 customers across more than 40 different countries, including an impressive list of top universities and schools such as UCLA, University of Oxford, University of Wisconsin and the University of Arizona. In an interview with CIO Applications, Daniel talks about utilizing technology to scale career guidance and alumni engagement.

Can you describe the challenges the education industry is currently facing as it pertains to career services?

When it comes to career services, one of the major issues institutions deal with is to prove the value of education as a product. As the cost of education has been persistently increasing, students nowadays pay huge sums toward private colleges and institutes. Parents expect to receive return on their tuition investment with their children securing jobs in top-notch companies; giving them a sound head-start to their professional life ahead. This is why career centers are always under pressure to provide every student with tailored career support.

On the other side, there’s the alumni relations department that understands the importance of engagement and that can be leveraged to create a strong alumni network, lead to improved fundraising and can act as a helping hand for existing students as well. Since both these departments can function alongside each other; creating a robust community for the students for enhanced employability is crucial.

Could you elaborate more on Graduway’s core offering and its unique functionalities?

Our core product is the Alumni Network, which is basically an online community where former students can connect with each other.

In a world where LinkedIn has become the primary source for professional connections with over 400 million subscribers, the focus shifts from “who you know” or “what you know ” to how beneficial is one’s network and if it can generate the desired results. Educational institutions nowadays require a solution that allows the alumni to offer their assistance to current students, especially in terms of getting a job. Our product primarily focuses on leveraging this particular attribute to create a “willing network,” promoting professional and social endeavours such as mentoring, internships, events, group discussions, and so on. Because of its real-time analytical abilities, the overall engagement and impact can be measured as well.

What are the key differentiating factors of your solution that makes it stand out in the market today?

On a product level, the UI/UX, and the integration with media channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn, make it a visual treat. With access to automated scheduling tools including, Skype and Google, our platform is highly intuitive. Built with customizability and flexibility in mind, our solution allows each institution to tailor its own desired user experience. Every user is entitled to unlimited profile attributes as well, which are available in 40 different languages. Other than that, our product also delivers a personalized feed with a combination of soft and hard data, resulting in high-level engagement. For clients with multiple institutes spread across various locations, they can enjoy the benefits of combining alumni engagement with data management; making the monitoring process simpler. Our product also comes with a job and internship board that displays the latest opportunities in accordance with the user’s preferences.

With our mobile app, students have access to the platform on the go. Being able to integrate with our client’s existing software is another advantage we offer. We have over six years of experience in delivering desired results where we have assisted our customers through every step of the process.

Please share a case study that highlights Graduway’s prowess in helping its clients overcome their engagement challenges and attain the desired outcome?

UCLA came to Graduway to enhance their mentoring program and increase engagement across 8 different schools and affinity groups. The university launched its platform named “UCLA One” which currently has 34,000 users and the alumni engagement shot up from 19% to 34% in a short time. On top of that, a total of 2077 users joined mentoring programs.

In another instance, we were approached by the University of Wisconsin, where the primary goal was to increase engagement across the younger alumni group and the donors. Graduway helped them create their own platform called “Badger Bridge,” which resulted in a 64% increase in alumni engagement and a 93% increase among the major gift donors.

What do you envision as the next big step that your company will be taking?

Looking ahead, we intend to support end-to-end relationships. From being a prospective student to an alum and then finally a donor, we want to support our clients through the complete educational lifecycle. In the next two years, we aim to broaden our solution by partnering with other industry leading companies to help our customers scale their efforts from recruitment all the way to fundraising. The combination of organic growth and partnerships will help Graduway retain the title of being the market leader.