Using LinkedIn to Explore Alumni Career Paths: A Strategic Approach to Choosing Your College Major
Using LinkedIn to Explore Alumni Career Paths: A Strategic Approach to Choosing Your College Major
Posted on 2/1/2025
In a recent NextGen Talent spotlight, Degree Dollars and Cents: Find Out What Massachusetts Public College Graduates Make by Major and Degree with PSEO Explorer, we showed how you can use this free tool to explore how much graduates of various majors were earning. In this spotlight, we’ll show how you can explore the career paths taken by graduates of various four-year college programs by analyzing their social profiles on LinkedIn.
By conducting social profile analysis on LinkedIn you can learn where graduates of colleges and programs you might be interested in currently work, the jobs they hold, and how their careers have developed over time, gaining a realistic picture of the positions that can be obtained with a particular degree.
What You Can Learn from Social Profile Analysis
Uncover the Career Paths of Graduates
LinkedIn profiles show what jobs graduates hold after they’ve finished their degrees. For example, a graduate with a computer science degree might work as a software engineer or data scientist, or even hold a different job title. This can be helpful in understanding the range of job options associated with a given major.See Which Industries Are Hiring
Seeing where alumni are working gives a better sense of which industries and companies hire graduates from certain fields. For example, graduates with a business degree may find work in finance, marketing, consulting, and other related fields in a variety of industries.Follow Alumni Career Journeys
Tracking the career progression of alumni shows how their careers have evolved. Do they change industries? Do they get promoted quickly? What roles are they in now?
How to Conduct Social Profile Analysis on LinkedIn
Search for a College or University
In the search box, enter the college/university of interest. Then click the “Alumni” tab.Enter Start and End Years
Narrow the timeframe to get information on graduates a few years into their professional careers.Filter by Major
Use the arrows on the top right of the page to scroll to the bar graph titled “What they studied.” Click the major listed on the bar graph to see graduates of that major. You can also use scroll arrows at the top of the page to see where graduates of this major work and the types of jobs they are doing.Review Alumni Profiles
Look at the profiles of individual alumni to see their job titles, companies, and career paths.
Here is a search result example from the University of Massachusetts Lowell from 2018-2024 for Business Administration and Management majors.
By exploring LinkedIn profiles in this way, you can discover unexpected career paths, identify companies hiring graduates, and track alumni career trajectories. Combined with tools like PSEO Explorer, using LinkedIn can help you make more informed decisions about college majors and future careers.