I second this request. We use a self-reported "Personal Industry" and drop-down "Company Industry" but would also like to see better standardization. Self-reporting results in non-conformity and random comments, see screenshot below of how some these self-reported Personal Industry fields populate in our directory. I also would like to see better use of a "Skills" field so that prospective employers could seek out alumni with specific skills. Additionally, I would also like to see filters and visual flags on profiles for "I'm Hiring" and "I'm Job Hunting," or somethng similar.

We would love to better use the alumni directory for networking as well as hiring, but the current directory doesn't filter well, is cumbersome to select more than one selection and could be vastly improved.

What we did here instead was create a "Fields of Expertise" section in our Alum Directory so people could enter the multple fields that they have worked in or studied in or would be willing to speak with another alum about. This has helped us include alums who have retired or who may work in marketing but have a law degree etc. We decided on a list that is working for us...it's an art not a science. You don't want it too long thus people abandon it, but you don't want it too short without detail either. We found LInkedIn's list was way to short. For example Interior Design was part of Consumer Services. Doesn't work for us. But we just added "Construction" which we did not have at first, because an alum told me that it didn't really fall under "Real Estate".

Hiya Camille S., thanks for sharing with us! Following up on this: