The Fletcher Mafia: Network or Urban Legend?

I am not taking the second module this Fall semester but am looking at taking it in Fall 2019.

Background

This project stemmed from my own experiences during the application process for The Fletcher School. While I had constantly been hearing about how well connected the alumni network was but I could not manage to get hold of any information about Indian alumni, the sectors they’ve worked in across the years, the locations they have moved to, a mapping of their various career trajectories etc.

Purpose of the project and Research Questions

I will limit this project to the Indian alumni of the Master of International Business (MIB) program since inception i.e. include a decade’s worth of metadata for inter-temporal analysis. The purpose of this project is to understand the career trajectories of this alumni network, the locations and industries they end up working in, how they are connected to other members of the network and how it has changed over the years.

This information can be used to better direct efforts of the Office of Career Services and Alumni Relations to provide targeted information to alumni, prospective and current students, connect members of the community through programs which serve common purposes and interests.

The further scope of this project will be to expand it to other degree programs and also look at geographical areas from where we have less / dwindling student representation and engage alumni in those areas for information sharing and recruitment programs and initiatives.

Research Questions:

1.       What are the various subgroups that alumni networks are divided into?

Intent of this question is to understand if alumni are connected closely based on their location, industry, sector, employer, graduation year or designation (especially if it is at a senior position such as partner / director etc.)

2.       Have the cluster composition identified above changed over the years?

Intent of this question to understand the trends (if any) in terms of Fletcher alumni flow towards certain sectors / industries / employers over the years and if it can be leveraged to inform current students about opportunities in those areas.

Specifically it will be interesting to see if there are certain regions where several Indian alumni tend to relocate for work which would help international students further in their career search.

3.       Are there any specific employers who are connected to a significantly large number of Indian Fletcher alumni and / or help them transition between employers / sectors and / or industries?

Data Collection and SNA Methodology

While most of the metadata required for this analysis should already be available with the Office of Career Services and Alumni Relations, there may be a requirement to send a simple survey to all Indian alumni to get further information.

To begin with the attribute data required for this project will be:

1.       Location currently based out of (name of city)

2.       Industry (financial services, media etc.)

3.       Sector (private, public, non-profit)

4.       Designation (director, partner, associate etc.)

5.       Graduation Year

6.       Employer name (last 3, this data will not be valued i.e. there is no value given to recent employers vs. past employers. The main focus is to understand what kind of employers are a part of the network)

This analysis will primarily be a two mode network (alumni – industry, alumni – sector, alumni – employer). Using a two mode network to understand how alumni are connected through different organizations / locations at various points in time will provide better insight about which kinds of organizations to tap into to build alliances through research projects / student activities / seminars etc. via alumni engaged in those organizations and sectors. In this structure the nodes will be organizations and Fletcher alumni and the connections will be edges.

Network Measures:

1.       Network Description: it will be interesting to see in terms of location if the network over the years has been centralised (i.e. majority alumni have ended up staying in the United States for instance and within the US if its specifically in Boston / New York / California which may give an indication of what kind of industries and companies are open to hiring and retaining international students). Similarly if the alumni network has been centralised in a given sector (for instance the private sector primarily), but within the sub network is there small world-ness across allied industries (such as technology, impact investment, financial services).

2.       Network Type: It will be a two mode, binary, scale free network with hubs of connectivity which shape the way in which the whole network operates.

3.       Centrality Measures of nodes (organizations) for every given year will help understand if there are any specific organizations which hire and retain a high number of Indian Fletcher alumni (high degree, betweenness), perhaps investigate further on what the reason could be (for instance they could be large corporations which have visa sponsorship budgets or they’re developing business in emerging markets etc.)

4.       Factions and subgroups: Assess if alumni network is divided into factions which could be based on industry affiliation, graduation year etc. Within those subgroups assess if there are certain organizations or alumni which serve as brokers and help connect other members of the network (high betweenness and eigenvectors). Also see if there any visible trend across the years for these brokers / high connectors (for instance belong to the same industry in majority of the years under consideration)

5.       Two mode to one mode: For every year convert the two mode network to a one mode network to see who are the most well connected alumni in every batch (look at centrality measures) and use them to broadcast information across the network.

Future Scope of Study

1.       Include alumni from other degree programs

2.       Focus on specific geographic areas

3.    Focus on certain sectors / industries where we don’t have enough stronghold and compare them with sectors / industries that we do to see what lessons can be cross applied in terms of alumni reach out?