Recruiting Intelligence

We've been reflecting on all we learned at NACAC 2017 and everyone we met in the Exhibitor Hall. It seems that things keep circling back to a marketing strategy that appeals to us—and one that is still developing and is prompting puzzled looks from some of our clients and connections. "How do we incorporate and manage SMS texting in our student recruiting strategy?"

As an initial primer, below we review some of the challenges and rewards of SMS marketing, and we evaluate just a few of the many partners available to help your institution use emerging and trending SMS tools. Trust us, the SMS space is growing.

But this post is just the beginning. Like so many of the emerging technology tools over the past decade, we can't stop there. We'll be publishing an SMS marketing guide and review of vendors in the SMS marketing platform space. You, as our loyal blog subscribers, will be the first to get it! Bonus, right?

Before we give you some initial SMS perspective so you can start doing a great job with this important marketing option, we invite you to meet us at any of our upcoming conference presentations. We will be presenting global digital marketing insights in Princeton, NJ at NAFSA Region X, October 23-25. We will be in Weston, FL at the 9th Annual AIRC Conference, December 6-9 and in Miami Beach, FL at the ICEF Workshop, December 11-13. Reach out to us for a cup of coffee and a conversation! We always love to connect.

Read on for some help developing your SMS student marketing plan.

There is so much happening here at Intead this week! We are so excited to share it with you.

First, we are dedicating this week’s blog post to our team member Jen Thayer, (you may know her as the long time manager of this blog), who will be moving on to pursue a new career opportunity at Tufts Health Plan this week. We are so proud of everything Jen has contributed to the growth of this company. She is a very dear colleague and friend, and we know that she will continue to share her positive energy and enthusiasm with the world. Best of luck Jen – we are all cheering you on! 

Next, we are excited to be presenting a webinar: “A Game of Finders Keepers: Finding and keeping the good agents” in partnership with AIRC and Angel Ahmed of GNET-Global Network, Inc. this afternoon, Wednesday September 27th at 1:00 p.m. EST. 

We all know that finding a good international recruitment agent has its challenges, and maintaining the partner relationship isn’t any easier! How do you do it well when faced with different time zones, language barriers, and the need to stand out among the other schools in an agency’s portfolio? We will address these questions and more! Click here to register.

And finally, this week we are considering return on investment in the international recruitment process – how well are you able to track ROI? Good data helps you improve your recruitment, it helps you prove to your campus leadership that your recruitment efforts are worth it, and it shows you where you can improve. 

Finding the right formula for your university can help you answer questions about where you should be focusing your recruiting budget, and where you should be backing away. Read on to see where your institution can make key improvements in measuring ROI…

Last week, Intead presented at the NACAC conference—what an exciting whirlwind! We met so many wonderful experts in the field of recruitment and were able to share our insights with many of your colleagues during our session on international recruitment, hosted with our friends Sundar Kumarasamy (Northeastern University) and Steven Bloom (ACE). We are so thrilled that so many of you made it out to our early morning session!

If you were not able to attend, as our loyal readers, we would like to extend the invitation to register to receive our latest e-book, Quality.Cost.Convenience: Beating the competition for today’s “non-traditional” students before it is released to the public. Read on to secure your copy.

Since the conference, we have been thinking a lot about today’s political environment (isn’t everyone?) and the impact it is having on recent enrollment trends. While we were in Boston, we had so many great conversations about the latest 2017 enrollment data, marketing strategies to combat dips in enrollment and what the future holds. So, this week, we are taking a brief look at research around enrollment trends in the U.S. and U.K., post-Brexit and U.S. presidential election.

Please read on for key data and industry insights (and to register for the new e-book ;-)

Well folks, the week of NACAC has finally arrived! We are excited to meet so many of you at our pre-conference workshop and throughout the conference itself! If you are not already planning on attending, we invite you to join us for our presentation: Best Practices for International Recruitment Marketing at 8:30 on Friday morning in room 254 (yes, the first session of the day—we know it’s tough, but we promise to perk up your morning!) We promise value for your time. You'll hear trends and tactics from Sundar Kumarasamy from Northeastern University and Steven Bloom from ACE. So many changes happening in our field these days.

If you can’t make it, we would also be happy to schedule a 1:1 meeting, just drop us a line!

In the blog this week, we are taking a look at strategies for increasing international student retention through simple changes to your campus environment. Taking it back to the basics with a simple analogy, when you go to someone’s house for dinner, do you stay longer if you feel welcome? We do!

And, we’re sure that when you have guests, you try to make sure they feel welcome too. But, do you always do the same for your international students? As you well know, getting international students to your campus is only half the battle. Are you doing enough to ensure they stay? We all know that it costs less to retain a student than attract a new one, so remember ­– just like when you’re visiting your friend’s for dinner, if you make your international students feel welcome at the beginning, they are more likely to stay until the end.

Bottom Line: When students feel welcome and included on university campuses they are happier and do better in their studies. And, they tell their friends back home about it (bonus)! Read on for practical tips and techniques for increasing retention by making your international students feel welcome from the get-go.

Welcome back! Fall semester is here and we're glad to be back at it!

So much has happened over the summer and it seems that the rules keep changing. The welcoming tone here in the US, or the lack of that tone, continues to be such an important issue as we plan and implement our recruiting initiatives. And yesterday, DACA appears to be in jeopardy.

The Intead team will be at NACAC next week and I will be presenting on these topics and the latest international student recruiting trends. I'm humbled to share the podium with Sundar Kumarasamy, Vice President of Enrollment Management at Northeastern University and Steven Bloom, Director of Government Relations at ACE. Please let us know if you'll be there too! Our Starbucks card is your Starbucks card - Let's grab a cuppa.

Right now, we're going to jump right into what you expect from our Recruiting Intelligence blog with some great insights into using webinars effectively. Hosting webinars is a popular strategy for international student recruitment – and for good reason. 

As you know (we’re sure you’ve run more than a few yourself at this point), webinars are flexible recruitment tools that can be effective at multiple points along the recruitment funnel – providing general information, generating leads and converting leads to applicants and enrolled students. The best part? The relatively low cost, of course. We know you don’t have an unlimited budget.

There are also plenty of options on the market offering a wide selection of features like CRM integration and multi-language interface. But, you don’t have to break the bank to host successful webinars. There are several free options that don’t have all the bells and whistles, but might be more familiar to your prospective students.

The big question: have you chosen the best tool to host your webinars? Does it make a difference? Turns out—yes, it does. This week we are exploring the wealth of options at your fingertips and helping you choose the most effective tool for your institution. Read on to explore the possibilities and download our free comparison chart (link at the end of this post).

Special thanks to Lu Bai, our international student intern from Bentley University for her outstanding work researching webinar tools and features! Lu, you're the best; good luck completing your Master's this fall! 

If you must, just skip to the end to download her webinar research – you'll just miss all of Cathryn's and Emily's great recruitment insights along the way ;-) 

Thanks for being loyal readers and sharers of our research. Please read on...and let the classes begin! ~ Ben Waxman

So, you have international students on campus. . . now what? We all know that the work doesn’t stop there. Your colleagues must have the tools and resources available to help students adjust both socially and culturally into campus life. 

As educators, we always strive to promote global awareness and perspective, but sometimes it can be difficult to foster this development on our own campuses. Questions that need to be asked every year—do we give students opportunities to interact across social and cultural backgrounds in all aspects of campus life? In the classroom, are there ways to foster greater inclusion with curricula and team assignments? In the end, are we producing alumni who are culturally literate and effective in a global workforce?

Achieving long-term institutional success through internationalization requires organizing on-campus resources to facilitate the types of interactions that open minds and build cross-cultural competencies. With supply chains, basic communication and daily business interactions in all industries going global, graduates entering the workforce need cross cultural perspective and skills. They need to be comfortable working with and managing a diverse set of colleagues. The universities that "get" this will produce more effective and powerful alumni.

This is a topic that has been discussed for years at NAFSA, AIEA and other higher education forums, so we wanted to highlight some of the best practical solutions that we have heard, read and discussed with higher education experts. As we take our regular summer hiatus from posting to this blog, we thought this discussion on integration and inclusion would send us off on a positive note. We hope that you will take the opportunity to join us at the NACAC conference in Boston this September or at NAFSA Regional in Princeton, New Jersey this October! We will be offering up some great new research on international student trends and the digital tools that help you reach them.

Read on for a selection of innovative tips & techniques for achieving inclusion on campus and fostering cross-cultural competency...

For those of you who were at Nafsa (that was already a week ago!), we know you are still struggling to catch up with everything now that you are back (at least we are!). We hope you are taking time to enjoy an iced drink and breathe instead of getting caught up in the usual frenzied pace (we are trying on this end ;-).

We recognize that many of you were not able to make it out to LA this year, so we want to make our insights available directly to your inbox.

This year we were pleased to present two main sessions—the first with FPP EDU Media (see link below) on our latest prospective international student research on the influence of US Executive Orders and Brexit. This research will result in our next Know Your Neighborhood report – our team is hard at work on that already. The second presentation, with Megan Prettyman from Montana State University, was on best processes for selecting and implementing a CRM System for your institution.

Read on to see key insights from the presentations and download the session slides… 

To all the friends we saw at NAFSA, I hope your week was valuable on many levels. I found this year’s conference more inspiring than the past few. Perhaps because we all have a renewed sense of purpose to prove the value of our work and our worldview.

I shared this sentiment with a colleague the other day and she sent back, “Agreed!”

There is much to consider as we move forward with our international student recruiting strategies. One thing is clear: waiting for the dust to settle is NOT AN OPTION!

When we shared our 2017 survey results with a nice-sized crowd at NAFSA this year, there were a few uncomfortable moments. The data regarding student sentiment about the US and the UK is not good news. What is important here is to take steps to mitigate the negative sentiment that is out there.

No question, international students are annoyed with US and UK foreign policy statements (to say the least). We can only imagine what it must be like to be a young person with a global mindset watching the leaders and citizens of important countries say, in effect, “We don’t want you here!”

Thanks for dashing idealism and entrepreneurialism around the world!

By making visas harder to obtain. By making customs more annoying to navigate. By reducing access to jobs and training opportunities. When posting salacious international headlines on a regular basis. The fires of discord are being stoked.

So what do we do in times like these? Read on for a subset of tips we shared at the conference. Our slides will be available next week.

Greetings from Cathryn (left), Ben and Elaine. This week we are writing to you from sunny Los Angeles where we are proud to be meeting with key leaders in the field of international student recruitment at the annual NAFSA conference! This gathering of thought leaders has put forth research and publications that will propel our industry--working to counteract the impact made by our evolving political environment. Or, so we hope!

We find ourselves surrounded by an outpouring of compassion, genuine concern and energy for the future of our industry. There are many focused on the safety and wellbeing of our international students, and their ease of travel into and out of our country. The right questions are being asked--how do we create and sustain an attractive, welcoming and safe environment? How do we effectively support groups facing discrimination? How do we counter negative perceptions on all sides? 

As we face such big, challenging questions, we felt the need to quote Jessica Sandburg of Temple University in her introduction to NAFSA's Guide to International Student Recruitment:

"We are those who help to open minds, bridge cultural divides, forge understanding and make meaningful connections ... At a time when the talk is of building walls, we are, and we will continue to be, those who open doors."

This bond is shared by all of us in international recruitment for higher education--a passion for breaking down barriers and creating a diverse, inclusive educational environment. 

Of course, we all know that passion is not always enough. This work is hard--really hard. And it is often not well-understood. This week, we have pulled once more from NAFSA's Guide to International Student Recruitment (see link below) to help you take an objective look at your existing marketing strategies and assess where you can make simple, efficient improvements. 

Read on for this week's helpful international student recruiting tips about conducting a digital audit of your global marketing: website, email marketing, social media... 

This is it – NAFSA is only one week away! As we prepare to travel and present our latest research, we find ourselves reflecting on how you do all that you do. The limited resources and hectic schedules as you meet with students from around the world. As always, we’re looking for ways to help. 

This week we are considering – how can you do more, with less?  We all wish we had more – more time in a day, a bigger budget, a larger team – the list goes on. As you know too well, in international student recruiting, the ideal strategy is often out of reach due the many distractions of running a complex office, limited funding and supersized expectations from above. Not to mention the fact that the rest of the campus seems to never understand your role.

We hear this a lot from international recruitment professionals. In fact, it was one of most cited “pain points” from a recent survey we conducted with our blog readers. So, if you find yourself facing these challenges, you’re not alone.

Any solace there? Maybe a bit. Better yet, let’s look at how to proactively make your situation better and your results stronger.

Read on for recruiting tips and a list of how/where to get the best data available to guide your global recruiting program…