Goal and strategy
The goal of the Hungarian Alumni Network is to support actively the local CEMS Club in their activities and to contribute to building a strong local network. The members are dedicated to reach this goal, by
- Initiating and organizing regular social networking events, where Alumni can meet former peers and current CEMS students as well
- Being an approachable and proud member of the network (mentoring, career development, employee referral, etc.)
- Providing support to local CEMS Club (knowledge sharing and guidance, networking)
- Taking actively part in the events organized by the local CEMS Club
- Promoting regional events within the network (Waltzing Days, Annual events)
Activities and results
Our aim was in the past years to bring together the Alumni and involve the students as well to widen the CEMS network. Here are the main results of the Hungarian Alumni Network:
- Organizing networking events and social drinks. Social gatherings are organized every year once ore twice. Members are responsible 100% of organization of these events from booking the venue, til promoting the event and assuring a high level of participation. All these events were very well welcomed and evaluated by both Alumni and current CEMS students.
- Bigger events 2 times a year. CEMS Mixer and CEMS Conference Night can be mentioned as an example where either special speakers were invited, or a special theme was set up.
CEMS Mixer. Students and Alumni are invited to join the event and the organizers guaranteed the maximum level of networking among alumni and students by rotating the participants after every meal. Besides the great discussions this is a great way for student to improve networking skills and fine-tune their competences for the Rotation Dinner for examples were they network with Corporate Partners.
CEMS Conference Night. A mini-conference with invited guest speakers (2-3 hours) is followed by wine tasting. We aimed to invite well-known and interesting people from the business world to present for us (for example Mr. Gerendai, who is the owner of Sziget, Balaton Sound, Volt Festivals in Hungary)
- Student Alumni Mentorship Program. In the past 5 years 2-3 times we organized SAMP mentorship program, which aimed to invite Alumni to lead and share their expertise with a small group of students in different areas (i.e.: startup, finance, marketing, consulting, etc). It gave opportunity to Alumni to inspire students, students also valued it, since they could learn from an expert in their preferred area. The program was usually kicked off with an opening event were the Alumni was introduced and mentoring started afterwards in various way, depending on the preferences and conditions: small groups, individual or online. It was also essential to showcase the wide range of expertise and experience available within the alumni network to inspire and motive the youth.
- AlumNights. The AlumNights Mentoring Events is a series of 4 or 5 round-table discussions and presentations throughout the year, where students can learn from alumni who already work in a certain field - like marketing, consulting, hr, startups - and are motivated to tell more about their experience.
- Alumni Database. The members are actively working on the Alumni Database and updating it time by time, in order to have a clear picture on the CEMS network.
- CEMS V4 Conference. Alumni was an active participant of the the regional conference. Alumni was not also an active player in the organizing team (responsible for promotion), but also played an important role in setting up and making happen the professional program of the conference.
In the circle of a CEMSie's life everybody starts as a curious but inexperienced student for whom Alumni are one of the greatest opportunity to learn from. As an Alumni, you can give back what you gained from CEMS or even more!
