Why this exists
Peer business schools — IIM-A, IIM-B, IIM-C, ISB — have built multi-decade alumni networks that drive admissions, placements, donations and brand value. FORE doesn't yet have a comparable digital backbone. This project is that backbone.
The problem
The FORE School of Management LinkedIn page lists 9,397 alumni. But there is no single place where the institution, current students, or alumni themselves can:
- See who graduated, where they work today, and how to reach them
- Filter alumni by batch, industry, city, or company for placements, mentorship, and outreach
- Track which sectors and seniority levels FORE feeds into, year over year
- Be approached by current students for guidance, referrals, or interviews
Today this data sits on individual LinkedIn profiles — fragmented, search-capped, and inaccessible to the institution as a whole.
What this project does
- Discovery (Phase 1). Walks LinkedIn's search using every legitimate filter combination — 18 geos × 38 specialisations × the FORE alumni widget. Currently at 4,413 unique LinkedIn profiles across 57 filter passes.
- Enrichment (Phase 2). Visits each profile through a stealth-fingerprinted Chromium (CloakBrowser) with periodic session refresh. Captures current role, company, location, batch year, program, about-text, followers, connections, and email when available. Currently 161 profiles fully enriched; enrichment continues in 2-hour rate-limited sessions.
- Storage & UI. Postgres backend (`fore_alumni` DB) with a FastAPI + Chart.js frontend you're using right now. Every field is editable through the UI — alumni can claim and correct their own profiles.
- Continuous growth. Each enrichment also harvests "People also viewed" recommendations and inserts them back into the discovery queue — turning the database into a self-expanding graph.
What peer schools have — and what we're building toward
| Feature | IIM-A · IIM-B · ISB | FORE today | This project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Searchable alumni directory | ✓ (paywalled / login-only) | — | ✓ (live) |
| Profile claim & self-edit | ✓ via SSO | — | ✓ (live — edit form on every detail page) |
| Filter by batch / industry / company / location | ✓ | — | ✓ (live) |
| Mentorship matching (students ↔ alumni) | ✓ (IIM-A's "Alumni Connect") | — | Phase 2 (designed) |
| Job board (alumni-posted openings) | ✓ | — | Phase 2 |
| Geographic chapters & events | ✓ (Bangalore Chapter, Mumbai Chapter, …) | Loose WhatsApp groups | Phase 2 |
| Newsletter / alumni-in-the-news | ✓ (IIM-B "Eternal Bonds" magazine) | — | Phase 3 |
| Donations & fundraising | ✓ (IIM-A endowment portal) | — | Phase 3 |
| Placement / salary analytics for institution | ✓ (internal dashboards) | Manual surveys | Already possible from this data |
| Anonymous data API for research | Some (IIM-B Research Centre) | — | ✓ (live /api/stats, /api/alumni) |
How this was built
Single-developer build, designed to run on a laptop. Postgres is the source of truth; every other surface (CSV exports, charts, JSON APIs, the edit form, future features) is just a view over the same table. Scraping is rate-limited and the script's session-aging behaviour is documented for ongoing maintenance.
The pitch
FORE has the raw material — 9,400 graduates across four decades, many in senior roles at every major Indian consulting, banking, and tech firm — but no digital surface to use them. This project ships that surface as a working demo in week one, with a clear roadmap to feature-parity with what IIM-A and IIM-B have spent years building.