Claim Your School's Alumni Business Directory on Hire Alum

Running a school's alumni network is a full-time job on its own. Maintaining a separate tab open to email us every time a business listing needs approving — or every time the school's page needs a photo updated — shouldn't be part of it.

Starting today, anyone affiliated with a school can claim its alumni business directory on Hire Alum and manage it directly. Alumni association presidents, development officers, advancement staff, communications directors — if you have a genuine connection to the school, the tools are now yours.

What "claiming" a school means

When you claim a school on Hire Alum, you become a school admin for that directory. That's a specific role on the platform — distinct from a regular user account, and not the same as the Hire Alum platform team. It gives you direct control over three things:

The school page. Edit the name, description, hero image, logo, and contact details. Changes go live the moment you save them — no review queue, no waiting on us.

The listing approval queue. When alumni submit their businesses to be included in your directory, you decide what gets approved. Approve listings that belong, remove ones that don't fit, and keep the directory relevant to your community.

Alumni verification. Each listing can credit its owners with a verified alumni badge — a signal to visitors that the person behind the business actually graduated from your school. You control who gets that badge in your directory.

Who should claim their school

Hire Alum directories work best when someone with real knowledge of the school community is making decisions about what's in them. The verification and moderation tools in the platform are designed to be used by people who know the school — not by a platform team working from a distance.

If you're in any of these roles, claiming your school's directory is worth doing:

• Alumni association president or board member — you already field requests from alumni business owners; now you have a place to send them and a queue to manage approvals
• Director of alumni engagement or development — alumni business directories are an increasingly common part of giving and reunion programming; claiming gives you a controlled channel you can promote
• Communications or marketing staff — the school page on Hire Alum is a public-facing representation of your institution's alumni community; claiming ensures it's accurate and on-brand
• Dedicated alumni volunteer — some of the most active school directories are managed by individual alumni who care deeply about the community; if that's you, the tools are there

How to claim your school

The process takes less than two minutes.

1. Find your school's page — search at hirealum.com/schools or go directly to /schools/your-school-slug
2. Click "Claim this school" — the button appears in the school sub-navigation bar on live pages, and prominently on coming-soon pages
3. Sign in if you haven't already — Hire Alum uses email-only sign-in (one-time code, no password), so you just need your email address
4. Describe your role and affiliation — tell us your title and how you're connected to the school; a sentence or two is enough
5. Submit — our team reviews the claim and emails you within 2 business days

Once approved, you'll get an email with a link to your management dashboard at /manage/your-school. From there, the branding editor, listings queue, and alumni verification tools are all one click away.

Coming-soon schools can be claimed too

Not every school on Hire Alum has launched its directory yet. We've listed over 45 schools in the pipeline — including many Miami-area schools — that are scheduled to go live over the next year.

If your school is in the coming-soon state, you'll see the claim prompt on that page too. Claiming early means:

• Your school's branding is accurate from the first day it goes live
• You have an approval queue set up so listings can be reviewed immediately on launch
• You can promote the directory launch to your community knowing it's ready

It's the difference between a directory that opens polished and a directory that opens with placeholder content.

What visitors see when a school is claimed

Once a school has an admin, the directory page shows a Claimed indicator — a small green badge that signals the page is actively managed. For visitors, that's a meaningful trust signal: the business listings in this directory have been reviewed by someone with real knowledge of the school community, and the alumni badges on individual listings have been verified by a person, not just self-reported.

For schools without a claimed directory, the "Claim this school" button stays visible — both on live pages (in the sub-navigation) and on coming-soon pages. So if you're the first admin to claim your school, that option is always there.

Why alumni directories work better with local administrators

Hire Alum can build the platform, maintain the infrastructure, and get schools listed. What we can't do as well as you can: know whether a submitted business genuinely belongs in your school's community.

Is the founder actually a graduate? Is the listing information accurate? Does this business represent the kind of alumni entrepreneurship your community is proud of? Those are judgment calls that require institutional knowledge — the kind you have and we don't.

The claim feature is an acknowledgment of that. It's not about offloading moderation work onto schools. It's about putting the right people in control of decisions they're better positioned to make.

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Affiliated with a school that's on Hire Alum? Find your school at hirealum.com/schools and submit a claim. If your school isn't listed yet, you can request it here and claim it as part of the setup process.