5 Ways to Motivate Your International Student Recruiters

Energizing, educating and motivating your recruiting network around the world is an important function for admissions offices. But what are the best ways to encourage your recruiting network? How can you motivate your network to be productive?

Of course you have an official legal agreement with the agency, but what really matters are the individual counselors. Within the U.S., universities undertake great pains to connect with high school counselors: visiting with them on the road, inviting them to campus tours and so forth.  You should think of the individual recruiting agent in the same way.  

We know this is more challenging. Distance is a challenge, of course, but so is the size of many agencies. Most of the time you will not have the opportunity to meet your recruiting agents in person -- at least in larger agencies -- because the turn-over is much higher and you may have a large number of agents. I recently visited an agency in Beijing with over 300 counselors in Beijing alone. 

But you need to undertake efforts to engage counselors and work with the owner, account managers and other staff of your recruiting agencies. Signing the recruiting agreement is not enough. 

Here are some ideas of what you can do:

• Regular communication: Skype, email, dedicated websites, newsletters, apps and presentation tools  (yes, we offer one called STOURY) are great.   There is no silver bullet for effective communication. Emails are nice but does anybody read them anymore? And how will you communicate with the revolving door of new staff? Consider discussing with your key agencies their preferred methods of communication.
• Holidays: Do you remember local holidays and communicate well wishes with your local agents? Taking a brief amount of time to send greetings for local celebrations will show a gesture of good will and create a deeper relationship of trust and understanding. Remember, the relationship, not the agency agreement, is key for the partnership to find success.
• Web training sessions: Scheduled sessions with the agents within one office or within several offices will give you focused time with the agency. They will have an opportunity to "meet" you and learn more about your institution, unique institutional highlights and the kinds of students you are working to recruit...together.
• In-country sessions:  A large language school organizes events in nice hotels around the world and invites agents. Personal touch matters!
• Familiarization tours:  The Australian universities have a long tradition of these tours and we hear and see them occurring more in the United States and Canada.  A familiarization tour allows you to bring the agency staff to your campus. These events are often a joint, collaborative effort made by several institutions to defray costs, allow for shared planning, and expose agents to a wider range of institutions. These tours creates direct connections, a first-hand impression of facilities and programs, and a deeper relationship.   Remember in many agencies, the staff has never traveled to the countries to which they refer students.  Familiarization tours are often scheduled in connection with other large conferences and programs. You can see examples of these tours in the context of ICEF events and also NAFSA.