Studying Alumni's Education and Work Experience Through Social Network Analysis: A LinkedIn Case Study

The follow-up of alumni, that is, graduates of a house of studies, is an increasingly important process in universities to maintain relationships and professional opportunities between the parties and to validate graduation profiles and other relevant factors of institutional management. Once graduated, the alumni continue their professional careers taking further training and different types of jobs, thus establishing relationships with multiple organizations in the public and private world. These interpersonal ties form social networks that can be studied using social network analysis techniques. In this article, we analyze an alumni network from the computer engineering career at a Chilean university based on data collected from the LinkedIn platform. Through the analysis techniques, it was possible to characterize the alumni network, identifying a rich diversity of behaviors with different clusters and variable patterns over time.