Alumni & Friends
Bethel Focus
A Magazine of Bethel University
Meet Kara Swanson
New Director of Alumni and Parent Services
Kara Swanson has joined the Office of Alumni and Parent Services as director, filling the role of Kevin Johnson, who left Bethel to join a corporation last summer.
A 1996 alumna of the College of Arts & Sciences and a former adjunct faculty member, Swanson helps facilitate all aspects of services to alumni and parents, cultivating Christ-centered relationships to support Bethel University and its mission. One of the new features she has started is a Bethel group on the networking website, LinkedIn (see story on this page).
Swanson holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and has worked as an international trade specialist and a corporate marketing manager. She and her husband also served as missionaries at the Alliance Academy in Quito, Ecuador, from 2004-2005.
Swanson can be reached at 651.635.2378 or kara-swanson@bethel.edu.
Get “LinkedIn” with Other Bethel Alumni
By Kara Swanson ’96
Director of Alumni and Parent Services
According to the Wall Street Journal Online , more than 80 percent of jobs are never posted in the “help wanted” ads or to online job boards. That’s where career networking comes into play; in many cases, finding the right job is often a matter of knowing the right person.
Professional networking is no longer limited to business meetings and conference rooms. Whether you’re looking for a new job or just hoping to re-connect with former classmates or colleagues, you can now develop and expand your professional network online through websites like LinkedIn.
To help facilitate connections between Bethel alumni, we’ve established a Bethel University alumni group on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the largest of the professional networking websites and has more than 17 million members representing 150 industries. You build your network by making connections with people you already know, including current colleagues and former classmates. Through your network, you have access to your connections and your connections’ connections—literally thousands of qualified professionals.
It’s free, and this is a great way to reconnect with friends, find potential clients or service providers, locate job opportunities, attract potential job candidates, and expand your network to other professionals.
When you join LinkedIn, you’ll first set up a profile listing your professional and educational accomplishments. This will help identify potential connections—perhaps current or former co-workers or people who attended the same school. Provide only as much information as you’re comfortable doing, and you can select those with whom you want to exchange information when they visit your profile.
To join the Bethel University alumni group on LinkedIn, go online to Bethel’s alumni office at www.bethel.edu/alumni and click on the LinkedIn link (www.linkedin.com). The LinkedIn site will give you directions to set up your profile.
1 “Experts offer their tips for fruitful networking.” The Wall Street Journal Online, http://www.work911.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?ID=6943