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Alumni Recruitment: Why Organizations Need A Boomerang Hiring Strategy

Published Date
Author Beamery Team

The departure of an employee doesn’t need to signify the end of their journey with your organization. In fact, it can mark the beginning of something beautiful: a lifelong advocate for your organization, and a potential magic ingredient for your future recruitment efforts. 

An alumni hiring strategy, often referred to as a “boomerang hiring strategy,” is increasingly vital for (generally larger) organizations aiming to maintain a competitive edge. This approach focuses on re-engaging former employees, making the most of their refined skills and organizational knowledge, to rehire them as productive employees – way more efficiently.

The Challenge: Losing Critical Talent 😢

When employees leave, they take with them not only their skills but also their deep understanding of the organization. This departure creates a knowledge vacuum and a gap in critical skills – a gap, in a world of gaps, that is not easily filled. 

Alas, engaging alumni who possess these valuable attributes can be challenging. The window of opportunity to bring them back is often limited, and the efforts to reconnect can be thwarted due to outdated contact information, data compliance issues (getting consent for re-engagement), understanding how their wider skill set could be valuable to your company at various stages, and nurturing alumni at scale (when HR resources are limited).

Where Did They Go? ✈️

According to a 2009 study by the University of Twente, while only 15% of companies had formal alumni networks, 67% actually had informal groups organized by former employees (HBR). This indicates a natural inclination among alumni to stay connected, presenting a missed opportunity for organizations without formal alumni strategies.

Over on LinkedIn, you’ll find over 118,000 corporate alumni groups… yet most lack formal ties to their original employers. This disconnection means that many potential boomerang employees are beyond the direct influence of their former organizations. Companies without an alumni strategy miss out on these valuable individuals who might otherwise be open to returning.

And there are many of them. In our latest Talent Index study, we found that 39% of respondents had left a company and, at least once, regretted their decision to leave. 

“So-called “boomerang hires” – leavers that return to a company at a future date – often possess a wealth of both internal and external knowledge, making them a very valuable resource. They bring new skills and resources developed at other organizations, together with their previous knowledge and experience of their current organization’s culture, processes and internal network. This speeds up their workplace contributions, reduces hiring costs and improves the average retention rate.” World Economic Forum

The Solution: A Dynamic Alumni Hiring Strategy 💡

To overcome these challenges, organizations need to implement a strategic, automated approach to engage and nurture alumni talent. This involves several key components:

  1. Collect alumni skills data: It may seem obvious, but you need to ensure you truly understand the people leaving your company – even as they go forth and learn new things. Keep a record of the skills they have at the time of exit, and give people a place where they can update their own information, including their interests and preferences. 
  2. Build an alumni segment in your Talent CRM: Whether you use Talent Pools, tagging, or other forms of organization, you should make it easy to see who has worked for you previously – and you can then send them more tailored communications. Ensure alumni are grouped automatically in the system.  
  3. Apply ethical AI: AI can help you infer someone’s skills and work out skills adjacencies – that is, you can see what your alumni is potentially capable of, even if they haven’t mentioned it. 
  4. Send personalized nurture campaigns: Keeping in touch with former employees doesn’t have to take manual effort. With good templates and reliable talent data, your campaigns can run in the background, automatically engaging alumni with relevant content and opportunities tailored to their skills, preferences and career goals.
  5. Ensure compliance: Develop protocols to handle data according to local and global regulations, ensuring privacy and security. Ensuring compliance with data protection regulations is crucial. Systems must allow alumni to update their preferences and maintain up-to-date contact information, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the data.
  6. Use “positive intent” insights: Talent analytics can show you which alumni are most likely to be open to re-engaging with you, allowing Talent Acquisition teams to focus their efforts effectively.
  7. Ensure efficient onboarding: Rehiring alumni should be streamlined to reduce the time to productivity. Familiarity with the organization means that alumni should be able to onboard faster and reach their productivity peak quicker than completely new hires.
  8. Monitor and adjust: Continuously track engagement metrics and feedback to refine the strategy, and make improvements to the process. 

alumni portal

Benefits of a Boomerang Hiring Strategy 🎡

The benefits of implementing an alumni hiring strategy are manifold:

  • Speed up Talent Acquisition: Building talent pipelines and thus becoming more proactive with hiring is a priority for many organizations. Using alumni as a source of talent can save you money and make your team more efficient. 
  • Faster time to productivity: Alumni can hit the ground running due to their prior knowledge of the company’s processes and culture. 
  • Expanded referral networks: Alumni can act as valuable referral sources, bringing in new talent with their endorsements.
  • Fresh perspectives with familiarity: Returning alumni bring new skills and insights gained during their time away, enriching the organization with fresh ideas while benefiting from their understanding of the organizational context.

Adopting an alumni hiring strategy allows organizations to maintain a continuous relationship with former employees, transforming potential talent loss into a strategic advantage.

“Our alumni understand our business, our clients and company values. Each year, around 15% of our external hires are from our alumni community.”  Trent Henry, EY Global Vice Chair of Talent

Through automated, personalized engagement (centered on skills), enterprises can rehire the right alumni faster, ensuring a smoother transition and a quicker return to productivity. This approach not only fills critical skill gaps but also enriches the organization with new perspectives, ultimately driving sustainable growth and success.

Learn more about Alumni Management solutions from Beamery.