Recruiting Intelligence

For those of you who are regular readers, we know the Intead team is guilty of generating too much value all at once. Not apologizing for it. 

The Intead team has cranked out 3 industry reports and 2 book chapters with never before gathered data. True to form, this stuff is absolutely instructive for the ways you will want to position your academic offerings.

Our latest research is THAT good. 

If you haven’t kept up on what we’ve published recently on the international student experience (3 separate datasets!), don’t worry. This post will catch you right up. It’s your quarterly industry insights at-a-glance, and this round includes new Intead research with our partners at NAFSA, Studyportals and F1Hire along with our own view of industry news. 

Our next opportunity to meet!  

EducationUSA Forum, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

In today's Q2 Wrap Up post you will find...

Access groundbreaking data on: 

• How international graduates are finding jobs in the US job market, and the regions most apt to hire them 
• International graduate employment stats, including specifics on salaries, employers and the institutions that are making successful employer connections  
• How the US election is shaping international student decisions 

Industry points of view on: 

• Why Guyana is an emerging student recruitment source 
• How to take a data-driven, actionable approach to budgeting for international enrollment  

Marketing insights such as: 

• Economists’ new take on the ROI of your degree 
• Knowing when you’re ready to tap into your international alumni network 
• Getting your WhatsApp Business account up and running 
• The enduring value of email marketing 
• Messaging for the (really) small screen 
• Link to the new higher ed industry pub: Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth. 

Read on… 

Cue the confetti. A new guide for international education practitioners just hit the bookshelves.

Produced by Star Scholars and filled with analysis and counsel from luminaries in our field, you'll want to grab a copy (link to purchase below). With thanks to editors Dr. Jing Luan, Leilt Habte, J.D., Dr. David Di Maria, and Dr. Krishna Bista, and too many amazing chapter contributors to list here, this book packs a punch.

We were honored to participate by contributing a chapter on how to Leverage International Student Alumni in your student recruitment efforts and another chapter on Using Digital Marketing for International Student Recruitment. Below, we will be talking about your international alumni and serving up a really nice interactive tool offering guidance based on where you are at with your alumni program.

We could not have provided the clear and actionable content without the leadership of our friend and colleague, Dr. Gretchen Dobson with the depth of her work in this area.

The value of your international alumni cannot be understated. Few ready-made resources can connect as quickly and honestly with prospective international students, making them feel understood and welcome. This is about helping them connect with what is real and tangible based on a degree from your institution. Yet, for many institutions, tapping into this network remains on the to-do list. It’s one of those great ideas that remains underutilized. Blame resources, blame poorly maintained databases, blame, well, you know exactly what we are talking about.  

Of course, your institution has strong institutional support for building and maintaining a robust domestic alumni network. All the while, the relative importance and financial value of international students are often overlooked. In some cases, 7% of the total student population being international represents as much as 30% of total tuition revenue. A good idea to do that math for your institution if you have not already. Yet our institutional infrastructure remains lopsided, heavy on domestic alumni, light (or non-existent) on international alumni despite what they can contribute.

Our next opportunities to meet!  

EducationUSA Forum, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

In Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth, our chapter on international student alumni management is a great read for any enrollment leader looking to justify the costs associated with building a stronger connection to international alumni. It delves into the motives behind such an effort, including: 

• Brand awareness 
• Reputation management 
• Recruitment 
• Employability 
• Global connections 
• Public diplomacy 
• Financial resource  

At the end of the chapter, we offer the link to an interactive questionnaire designed to assist international student recruitment teams in evaluating their ability to deploy alumni ambassadors. This simple 8-question form provides customized recommendations based on your responses.Today this tool is available to Recruiting Intelligence blog readers (even if you don’t purchase the book. But really, purchase the book!) Read on to check out the evaluation form… 

Students as consumers and the consumer insights that matter.  

Getting to the mindset of international and domestic students is central to what we do. Last week we unveiled a new study on career pathways for international students seeking US work experience. If you haven’t had a chance to review the report, it’s worth your time. The report provides fresh insights into what a US degree actually produces for international students, offering a new way to quantify the value of your degree for all of those ROI-minded student prospects (and their families).  

This week we shift our focus to other factors that influence international student decisions to study abroad, including how the US presidential election factors into their choices. We did this research back in 2016 (the Trump/Clinton match up). Now we have new student data to compare and, YES! it is fascinating. 

In partnership with global study choice platform Studyportals, we distributed a 13-question survey via email to Studyportals account holders and placed banner ads visible to their website visitors. All told, 2,492 respondents from 106 countries across the globe participated. A significant percentage of responses came from students in African nations.  

There were some real surprises. Spoiler Alert: 2024 is NOT 2016. 

Our next opportunities to meet!  

GMAC Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 19 – 21, 2024. Ben will be presenting TODAY on how global elections are influencing student mobility. More than just the US presidential election has the power to upend what students will choose to do next.   

EducationUSA, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

Today, we share the Know Your Neighborhood (KYN) 2024 Survey Summary Report with you – our first post-pandemic addition to the KYN series. Previous KYN full reports are available to Intead Plus members. The 2019 report on emerging markets (Africa and Latin America) still has legs. The others have some still valid nuggets on cultural differences even though they are now 5 to 7 years old. Helpful stuff considering that 50,000+ international students completed our surveys. 

In our latest KYN report, we unlock current insights into the preferences and motivations of prospective international students, including the impact of political fatigue, observations on a possible rise in cynicism, and more. We share observations that suggest these feelings have opened some students to studying in previously avoided countries. And, of course, we get into the influence of families on prospective student decision-making. 

If you’ve been following along these past few weeks, you already know there has been a shift in priorities among international education seekers since our last KYN study done in the midst of and after the wild and surprising 2016 election year. Other than perhaps Karl Rove, no one really thought Mr. Trump would win in 2016. 

At the time, very few (14%) international student respondents said they would be more likely to study in the US should Donald Trump win the election. This go ‘round that number jumps to 30% who say more likely.  

Asked another way, in 2016 the majority (54%) said they would beless likely to study in the US should Mr. Trump win. That number dropped considerably in 2024 to 28%. What’s more, 42% this year say it won’t make a difference who wins. It’s just not as important to today’s cohort.  

We connected with so many of you over these stats at NAFSA a few weeks ago (what a week that was!). But, if we didn’t get that chance to chat in person, not to worry. Today’s summary report will give you what you need to know about the current international student mindset. It offers the core quantitative facts from our research as well as our recommendations on how your team may want to react to this news.   

Do, however, stay tuned as our data analysts are still wading through the quite telling qualitative responses. We are getting more insights organized for publication later this summer. (Hey, if you are reading this based on a share from a colleague, be sure to subscribe to our blog!) 

Read on to download our KYN 2024 Survey Summary Report and for 4 key takeaways from the study… 

Career opportunity is the primary motivating factor for international students. All our research into the international student journey says so. We’ve known this for a long time. If you can demonstrate that your degrees pave a beaten path to positive career outcomes, then you’ve got your prospect’s ear. Not many institutions can back up their promises with data...until now. 

Institutions seem to have had a hard time making the case for bottom line ROI. Sure, there’s the usual “x% employed within 6 months” data every institution flaunts, but what does that really tell a student who’s halfway around the world? Not a whole lot. We’re not saying to nix that stat – definitely keep it – but it’s hardly concrete proof for your prospective students. 

The fact is most institutions simply don’t have the student data on the whole job search process to offer much more. Especially for international students graduating from your specific institution. 

Nor do most institutions have the bandwidth to think it through for the international cohort. But data does exist that can help you uncover a truer and fuller picture of career potential for your international students. It’s a matter of knowing where to look, how to look, how to clean and crunch the data, and then interpret that data appropriately.  

Enter Intead’s analytics team and our colleagues at F1 Hire! On offer to you for download: our first Connecting Dots study, How International Students are Finding US Jobs: A Look at the Students, Degrees, and Institutions Producing Success. 

Our next opportunities to meet!  

GMAC Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 19 – 21, 2024. Ben will be presenting on how global elections are influencing student mobility. More than just the US presidential election has the power to upend what students will choose to do next.   

EducationUSA, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Viginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

Our newest dataset focuses on practical next steps for international graduates. The ROI insight they’re really after. And for institutions, our approach to analyzing US Department of Labor data can help your marketing recruitment team stand out at any student fair anywhere in the world. Wanna see how? Read on to download our report... 

The NAFSA room was sold out; every seat taken.  

That morning we really weren’t sure what to expect with our session being held in the very furthest room on the 3rd floor of the New Orleans Convention Center. And that convention center is one of the largest we’ve ever seen. Like, you need an Uber to get from one end to the other. 

We could not have been more thrilled with the turn out. What everyone came for: new data, never before collected, on what international students are doing after they earn a US degree. 

What’s been missing from our community’s conversation on the value of US degrees for international students is real ROI. Sure, we talk about ROI: “94% of our students are employed or pursuing advanced degrees 6 months from graduation.” But we’ve never quantified actual ROI...until now.  

Today we’re sharing a preview of new research on the career progress of international students who graduated from US institutions. (The full report will publish later this summer. Be among the first to receive this and 2 other groundbreaking reports by pre-registering here. You’ll also get our NAFSA 2024 session slides.)  

This NAFSA research report will be the first of what will become an even deeper analysis based on more research between now and 2025. We want to truly understand what a US degree produces for international students. Is it worth their investment? Is it worth ours? This is data we’ve been wanting to mine for years.   

Our next opportunities to meet!  

GMAC Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 19 – 21, 2024. Ben will be presenting on how global elections are influencing student mobility. More than just the US presidential election has the power to upend what students will choose to do next.   

EducationUSA, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Viginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

I was extremely honored to have presented our latest research at NAFSA last week alongside Dr. Joanna Regulska, vice provost and dean of global affairs at UC Davis. UC Davis is one of the 12 innovative and forward-thinking institutions participating in this groundbreaking study. 

Our research involved a 22-question survey sent to international students who graduated from our 12 university partners between 2019 and 2023 (see below for the full list). With a 5.3% response rate, 1,797 graduates from 131 countries answered our survey questions. Of these, 1,323 still reside in the US, 474 live elsewhere. 

What we learned will have a direct impact on international student recruitment, as well as offer perspective on US immigration policy. Data informs how we make sense of the world and move forward as a community and a society. The data collected encourages us to understand the value of CPT/OPT to our international students and the US.  

Laid bare: the real outcomes and the positive impact international student graduates are having on the US economy.  

For those of you interested in taking part in our next survey, be in touch at info@intead.com. So many of our higher ed colleagues at the conference raised their hands to evaluate participating in the next research phase of this project. Be a part of that! 

Below we share key takeaways from our research and provide you quick access to the slides from our NAFSA presentation. Read on... 

Greetings from New Orleans!  

NAFSA 2024 is well underway, and we are here for it. Literally. There are a ton of Intead team members in the Big Easy this year and we have a lot to talk about, not to mention all that we have to learn. Are you here, too? Let us know (info@intead.com). We’d love to connect! 

If you’ve been following our posts, then you already know we’ve been waist deep in data for months. The result of which is three different reports that we think will help shape the way you approach international student recruitment. Actionable insights delivered. 

One of our new outputs is a continuation of our popular Know Your Neighborhood (KYN) series. This time, a global survey done in conjunction with the global study choice platform Studyportals. 

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two presentations: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  TODAY (Wed 5/29/2024) @ 1 p.m. NOCC Room 391
  Featuring David L. Di Maria, Senior International Officer & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC, and Iliana Joaquin, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Intead 

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30, 2024 @ 11:30 a.m. NOCC Room 398-399
  Featuring Dr. Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean – Global Affairs, UC Davis and NAFSA Board Member with Ben Waxman, Intead CEO 

Our newest KYN report is our first post-pandemic addition to the series. In it you will find an analysis of the influencing factors and desires of international education-seekers when choosing where and what to study. And this includes the influence of politics and political leadership on their decisions – a question mark for many of us as we move through this long (and painful?) US presidential election season. Does this matter to international students? You betchya! 

The analysis is a thought-provoking comparison to our oft cited 2016 Know Your Neighborhood survey (Intead Plus members can access the full series here), which was conducted with FPP EDU media on the precipice of and in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election when Mr. Donald Trump was a first time Republican Presidential Nominee. Our report lays bare the undeniable shifts in the priorities of international education-seekers in the time since, including their current perspective on choosing to study in the US based on the winner of the 2024 US presidential election (Mr. Donald Trump versus Mr. Joe Biden).  

Were our findings surprising? You be the judge: 

• 30% of the international student respondents are more likely to want to study in the US if Mr. Trump wins, compared to just 14% who said so in the lead up to the 2016 election. 
• 28% are less likely to want to study in the US if Mr. Trump wins, compared to 54% who said so in 2016. 
• 42% said it didn’t make a difference, compared to 32% in 2016. 

Interesting. And we haven’t even gotten to the qualitative insights that really illuminate international student sentiment. We will have that ready for you soon. 

Until then we are offering our blog readers key findings from the Know Your Neighborhood 2024 survey via a downloadable infographic that will give you a lot to think about. It will certainly give you something to talk about. In fact, we can’t think of a better conversation starter for those mingling about at NAFSA this week. Give it a try! Read on… 

No one on the Intead team has participated in an Iron Man competition, but the adrenaline levels we are experiencing make me wonder if preparing three different, compelling, in-depth reports in time for NAFSA next week compares. I'm confirming that no one from our team will be running, biking, or swimming to New Orleans for NAFSA, but we have been running the analytics on some really novel data all related to different aspects of the international student journey. We’re so close to the finish line! 

The work has been exciting, sometimes difficult, and the data is beyond beaten up at this point. The payoff will be so rewarding. We really can’t wait to share all we’ve learned.

Today, we are going to let a few whiskers of one of our cats out of the bag. 

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two NAFSA presentations: 

We’ll be presenting insights in our two valuable Nafsa sessions: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  Wed., May 29 @ 1 p.m. in NOCC, Room 391
  Featuring Dr. David L. Di Maria, SIO & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC with Iliana Joaquin, Director, Digital Marketing at Intead  

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30 @ 11:30 a.m. in NOCC, Room 398-399
  Featuring Dr. Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean - Global Affairs, UC Davis and Nafsa Board Member with Ben Waxman, CEO at Intead 

Be the first to know!  Pre-register to receive Intead’s 2024 proprietary reports as soon as we publish them. 

We are all seeking to understand the global landscape for international students. Our latest research takes a hard look at the US career options and outcomes – key drivers of international student decision-making. Career outcomes are, after all, a central metric for many international students. Our take: not understanding how your institution plays into the US international employment scene puts you at a recruitment disadvantage. 

So, we partnered with our colleagues at F1 Hire to examine both public and proprietary data sets.  

If you’re not familiar with F1 Hire, its web extension, designed for international students in the US, has become the must-have tool for OPT/CPT/H-1B job seekers. Together we analyzed the US Permanent Labor Certification Program (PERM) and H-1B visa application data tracked by the US Department of Labor between 2018-2023. We will be sharing insights into the career pathway options for international students who entered the US workforce upon completing their degrees at US higher ed institutions as well as those who earned their degrees abroad. We reviewed this data against IIE Open Doors stats and proprietary data owned by F1 Hire. 

What we learned was fascinating.  

By drilling into this employment data, we see many ways institutions can use this information as a recruitment tool to demonstrate their success in helping international students find employment.  

An example: Our analysis of F1 Hire’s collection of 1.5 million job opportunities reveals significant disparities in H-1B opportunities relative to the number of international students by state. 

Here’s a sneak peek that surprised us: We found 6.4 H-1B opportunities in New Mexico per international student studying in state compared to just .34 H-1B opportunities in New York per in-state international student. Hello, New Mexico as a student destination! We simply didn't see that coming.

Our full report, which will be available soon, provides keen perspective on: 

• International student earning potential 
• Geographic insights (countries and regions) 
• Industry insights 
• India-specific insights 
• Job search insights 

And of course, we offer our take on what this all means for your international student recruitment efforts. 

Read on to register and be among the first to receive our full report. Below, we also share key takeaways from our research… 

That photo and headline were admittedly clickbait. There are certainly turbulent waters ahead, but no abyss from our point of view. We do have some great fiscal perspective to share here. And awesome photo, right? We took that while attending the AIRC Symposium and ICEF North America Workshop in Niagara, Canada. 

During the AIRC event, Maggie and Ben gave a truly valuable presentation with a new set of Intead slides focused on a data-driven, actionable approach to budgeting for international enrollment efforts. This session and the slides were extremely well received, especially in the currently ambiguous, post-covid student mobility climate.  

Let’s meet in New Orleans @ NAFSA 2024! 

Join one of Intead’s two NAFSA presentations: 

• ChatGPT and AI: What are the real opportunities for enrollment management? 
  Wed., May 29 @ 1 p.m.
  This one gives you the real-world picture, filtering out all of the smoke and silliness. Featuring David L. Di Maria, Senior International Officer & Associate Vice Provost for International Education at UMBC, and Iliana Joaquin, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Intead 

• Groundbreaking Data: International Student Employment After Graduation
  Thurs., May 30 @ 11:30 a.m.
  This one presents unprecedented data about the value of international students after they graduate. Never before research Intead conducted with support from NAFSA and 12 US institutions offers great opportunities to advocate for your internationalization efforts. Featuring Joanna Regulska, Vice Provost and Dean of Global Affairs, UC Davis and Ben Waxman, Intead CEO

Get ahead with soon-to-be-released data from Intead.  

Intead is gearing up to release 3 new proprietary data sets that will change the way your team thinks about international student recruitment in the coming year. Incredibly telling data on international student career aspirations, the companies that hire them, and how the US election figures into international student decisions. More to come at NAFSA 2024. Pre-register to receive the reports as soon as they become available. 

For the past 15 years, the Intead team has been watching the numbers and predicting the future of international student enrollment with accuracy. It was February 2020, as the Chinese government shut down travel in and out of Wuhan and Covid had just begun its rampage though Italy that we were quoted in the Boston Globe pointing to the impending global shut down of international student mobility. Not everyone was happy with our saying so. But we weren’t wrong. 

Our point: we are willing to be bold and make statements that others have every reason to avoid. Someone’s got to feed our industry sober and helpful intel without all the blather. 

So, read on for what we see ahead and will be talking about at the upcoming NAFSA and GMAC conferences. Oh, and to grab our budget planning slides from the AIRC Symposium that will be available here to our blog subscribers for just one week before we move them into our library only available to our Intead Plus subscribers.  

We don’t know who needs to hear this, but email is still alive and well. Thriving, in fact. And while all things social media are the marketing darlings of the moment, email, like the quintessential, foundational website, is an indispensable tool for your student recruitment. Some of you don’t believe us, we know. 

Consider this statistic: by the end of 2024, there will be nearly 4.5 billion email users worldwide—that's over half the planet's population. Chances are your target markets are among this crowd. What’s more, four out of 10 emails are opened through mobile apps (per Statista), putting your highly connected prospects just a notification away from your next message. 

“Sure,” you say, “But you’ve provided no age breakdown with those stats.” Mmm-hmmm. We hear you. 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024
• 2024 EducationUSA Forum in Washington, DC, July 30 - August 01, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

Why should you place bets on email campaigns when prospective students are so enamored with hugely popular social media platforms and never (never?!?) check their email? For one, email has an unparalleled direct line to your audience. And, unlike other more entertainment-focused social platforms, messages delivered via email are not competing with a third-party algorithm – you send them, they receive them. Plus, emails tend to be easier for your audience to hang on to than say a TikTok post, giving these messages a longer shelf life.   

Essential to this discussion: at what point in your recruitment comms do you use email? To be clear, use email as part of your lead nurturing strategy, NOT as an initial attraction effort. Capture their attention and inquiry using other channels (fairs, social media, counselor referral, etc.). Email is just one element of your effort to deepen the engagement.  

Interestingly, 58% of Gen Z check their email multiple times a day, 23% check it at least once a day, 12% a couple times a week, and 5% once a week, per Campaign Monitor. So, the idea that email is a vintage, washed-up medium is truly a nonstarter. Email is mainstream and will be for the foreseeable future. Including it as part of your recruitment efforts just makes sense.  

Yes, social media is a must-have recruitment tactic. Should anyone on your team need a refresher on the importance of taking an omnichannel approach to marketing, check out this post. 

In the meantime, read on for actionable tips on how to improve your email marketing game to boost, and prove, your student recruitment metrics. It has SO much to do with your content choices... 

With the amount of time prospective students spend online, you’d think connecting with them would be easier.  

The average US teen spends 7 hours 22 minutes each day looking at a screen, or 43% of their waking hours, per Exploding Topics. And that’s being conservative – Common Sense stats show teens on screens 8 ½ hours per day outside of school-related screen time. Need confirmation? Just look around your campus at all the students not looking at you, but rather their screens. (Reality check: the rest of us aren’t off the hook as the average person clocks 6 hours 58 minutes of screen time per day, just so you know. So yes, that is where all the time goes!) 

Do you know the average number of phone notifications a US teenager receives each day? We answer that below. Make sure you are sitting down when you read it.

Yet, despite all their screen time, or perhaps because of it, your prospective students are discerning consumers of marketing. If they’ve seen one university ad, they’ve seen a thousand. We’re certain you can relate. We all can. But some messages clearly do get through, and it almost always comes down to creativity, cultural nuance, and an appetite for taking a little risk.

Fun fact for the risk takers: Humor is a tough marketing message to achieve with a broad and diverse audience, but when you get it, it REALLY works. 

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations and we hope you can join us. 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, April 30 - May 3, 2024
• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

Take fintech, an increasingly rising "it" program in the eyes of so many STEM-degree seekers, especially those with a bent toward accounting and money-making in general. And rightly so as financial services operations around the world increasingly rely on new technologies to do business. (Shout out to Worcester Polytechnic Institute on its recent fintech doctoral program launch giving students a full-stack (BA>MS>PhD) option in this coveted field. Talk about reading the market!!!)  

Fintech is a huge, booming industry and one that universities with fintech programs are leveraging to draw the attention of prospects. The same can be said for Data Analytics, Cybersecurity, AI, and other “sexy” programs that now drive global and local economies. 

Important note: the counsel that follows here applies to how you message your programs even if you computer sciences are oversubscribed and you are trying to attract students to other options.

We want to promote programs that will draw eyes and pique interest. Highlighting them in your recruitment efforts makes sense. Of course, you know this. And yet somehow marketing that ultimately makes it onto the screen in front of your prospective students’ gaze is so often watered down, generalized speak about “great programs in computer science” or “practical business degrees” or the now far overused, “advance your career.” Ugh. Your prospect just scrolled on.

We know you know exactly what we’re talking about. So often there is a fear of getting too specific. Why mention one computer science program and ignore the others when students need to know there are many amazing degrees from which they can choose?  

Here’s why: you need their attention, and the coveted, interesting, or unusual programs will get it. Not the generalized track that simply prompts the finger flick and scroll right by. 

It’s not just your message you need to consider, it’s also the medium.

95% of US teens now own or have access to a phone per Pew Research. Worldwide, the stats vary (China has the most active smartphone users, followed by India, the US, Indonesia, and Brazil), but it’s safe to say many of your prospective students living outside of the US are on their phones, too. In Sub-Saharan Africa, affordability and access is improving such that there will be 692 million unique mobile users by 2030, 88% of whom will be using smartphones according to lobby group GSMA.

Many of your prospective students will not only be accessing information about your institution via smartphone, but will be completing the entire application process on it as well. Something your international team knows but your domestic team might not be thinking about. 

Marketers and message makers read on for our tips on phone screen engagement tips. Like all good listicles, we’ve got 5 steps to push your team to create effectively...