Recruiting Intelligence

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... 

An influx of petroleum dollars tends to turn heads. Just ask Guyana.

This small South American country used to be among the Western Hemisphere’s poorest. But that’s all changing since Exxon Mobil discovered oil just offshore in 2015. And not just some oil, but more than 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas. The country is now on track to be a top 20 oil producer within the next 3 years (by 2027). In 2022, it was reclassified as a high-income country by the World Bank.

As you might imagine, Guyana’s neighbors have taken notice. Venezuela, for one, has ratcheted up rhetoric on the long-running territorial dispute claiming the land as theirs. The US, too, has shown a heightened interest in the small country. Case in point, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled there just last summer to meet with Guyana’s president and key members of the cabinet.

All interesting. But why write about it here? Because this is the kind of ripening market that should catch your attention if your role is about expanding your international student recruitment to new markets.

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

• AIRC Spring Symposium and 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) 

Obviously, Guyana’s potential is no replacement for that of booming Indian or even the huge but slowing Chinese student markets. After all, its population is a small 800,000 (note: 27% or approximately 216,000 are in your key age group 10 – 24). But, for the proactive, trend watching recruiter looking to make an early entrance and develop relationships in an emerging region, Guyana could make a lot of sense. The cherry on top: Guyana is an English-speaking country – the only one in South America. 

To put it more plainly: 

• There is no language barrier for Guyanese students heading to the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.
• Guyana’s middle class is growing, rapidly.
• There are some concerns about safety in the country, even beyond the threat of opportunist neighbors, making relative perceived safety in the US less of an issue than say to a student/family from a place like Japan.

Got you thinking? Let’s take a closer look at Guyanese culture, education, and economy and how these factors might or might not connect to your international student recruitment strategy. And a big thank you to Dr. Mellissa Ifill of the University of Guyana for taking time to weigh in on this post! Read on… 

If you’re on the fence about WhatsApp, know this: Meta’s goal is to make WhatsApp a household name, whether it is to shop, chat, or stay on top of news and events. That from a recent New York Times article. In it, Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp confirms what we are already seeing, that the conversation has moved from ‘WhatsApp is the app I use outside the US when I travel,’ to something much more mainstream in the US. Below, we get detailed and actionable about what this means to you.

Word from Apptopia confirms as much. Its numbers show WhatsApp’s daily active users grew by 9% in the US last year, with 50% of these users chatting daily on the app, 78% weekly. Aside from Meta’s interest in cementing this app as the singular messaging tool among consumers worldwide, pundits point to a variety of reasons for the uptick in the US – the preference for messaging versus emailing, the preference for closed-group messaging rather than social media blasts, the increase in post-pandemic international travel, and the app’s ease of use for business communication just to name a few. 

Events you won’t want to miss:

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. Intead will be presenting on student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations at: 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 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)

Those who read last week’s post know how we feel. (Get to it!). It just makes so much sense for universities to have a Business WhatsApp account, especially those who work with international students. And now, we believe, for domestic markets, too. Check out our handy, quick-hit, 11-step check list.

Just like last week, this post is the kind of thing you might want to share with your enrollment team and prompt a discussion at the next team meeting. How would you adapt our recommendations to your particular situation (CRM, staff structure, enrollment pipeline, etc.)?

If you are going to be using WhatsApp, we strongly recommend you puppeteer these communications from a WhatsApp Business account. We got into the meat and potatoes of setting these accounts up last week. Now, let’s get to dessert, aka best use practices. Read on… 

What’s up with WhatsApp is a question we find ourselves answering a lot lately, especially when talking about student recruitment. And it is a bit more for international students than domestic, though this blog is useful intel for both. As a teaser, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on WhatsApp. Yes, that was 100 billion per day! We have more eye popping stats below. 

An important messaging tool because it works across countries, many institutions have been using personal WhatsApp accounts that are attached to a single phone number. That works, but as far as standard operating procedures go, that’s a bit flimsy.  

WhatsApp, a Meta company for 10 years now, has an answer called WhatsApp Business. That too has been around awhile (WhatsApp Business launched in 2018), but it’s just been a bit cumbersome for many overly busy international offices to onboard. And many of their domestic student recruitment counterparts have taken a why-bother approach. 

Our take: it’s time to bite the bullet – it’s easier than you think – and set up a WhatsApp Business account that can be managed from a desktop (see our quick hit 11-step process). We concede that it can be time consuming, but there are just so many benefits to having a verified account on behalf of your institution that we think it’s worth your while.   

Events you won’t want to miss:

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. Intead will be presenting on student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations at: 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 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) 

This is exactly the kind of stuff so many of you read our blog for, right? What is the time investment? What is the upside? How do I set my enrollment management systems up for success?   

So, let’s get right to it. Read on to learn why WhatsApp is proving to be a good tool for many student recruiters right now – international and domestic – and how to go about setting up your business account. We’ll make it easy for you, as always. And yes, this is one of those posts you’ll want to share with your team (link at bottom) and discuss in the next team meeting. 

Have we been selling ourselves short? A recent working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research has got us thinking, "Yeah, maybe." 

The not so fine print in “Late Bloomers: The Aggregate Implications of Getting Education Later in Life” is this: the age at which you get your degree matters. The economists found that the younger you are when you get degreed, the stronger your financial return on the investment from that degree. As a result, it may be time to take a closer look at how you present your institution’s ROI.  

Events you won’t want to miss:

And look for us at these other industry events coming around the bend:

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 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

The Late Bloomers paper (link below), which looks at university grads beginning with the US 1930 birth cohort onward, also reveals that around 20% of students obtain their 4-year degree after age 30, hence the late bloomer label. A not so insignificant figure, with more than a few not so insignificant implications.  

Sure, the popular notion that university grads are early 20-somethings remains true enough, but the 1-in-5-student stat reveals this belief is not the whole truth – and never was. Turns out the non-traditional student market is significant (you’ve read our series on the non-traditional student advantage, yes?).  

Significant and new with this paper: the understanding that late bloomers’ ROI may not be as strong as once thought. On the flip side, the new data analysis means the ROI for younger grads is even stronger than we believed. Interesting, and worth promoting.  

Other notable findings from the paper: Late bloomers have helped narrow the gender and racial gaps in university enrollment, even despite a widening racial gap among the early university grad set. And, late bloomers account for more than half of the growth in the share of university-educated adults from 1960 to 2019.  

There’s a lot to unpack here, including why we think you may be selling yourself short based on these fresh insights. Read on…we’ll keep it actionable. 

Admissions teams are working a little harder this admissions season, thanks to a few external inputs. We’re looking at you Supreme Court and FAFSA. That’s not to mention the many conversations we know you’re having on standardized tests. Just a bit more to add to your standard workload of actually recruiting, admitting and enrolling students. So, if you’re a little (or a lot) behind on your Recruiting Intelligence reading, then this is the post for you. We’ve compiled all our top news from Q1 2024 into this one spot.  

• IMPORTANT NOTE: HAPPENING TODAY  “Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Ed-hosted webinar. Featuring Gallaudet President Roberta Cordano and ansrsource CEO Rajiv Narayana. Register here. (All registrants will receive the recording even if they cannot attend.) 

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30, 2024. This one-day event in beautiful Niagara, Canada, will explore best practices in developing, managing, assessing, and sustaining the many partnerships that are so foundational to international enrollment success. While there, be sure to attend Intead's session all about student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today! 

And look for us at these other industry events coming around the bend: 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 2024. 
• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024.  

Hope to see you soon! 

ICYMI: What we were posting about this quarter:  

• STEM OPT – personal narratives and growing demand 
• LMS “learnability” – accessibility is not the same as learnability 
• Shortcut tools (AI anyone?) – how to take a template approach wisely 
• Vietnam as a top student source – and not just for US institutions 
• Budgeting framework tools – a free download to help your team plan ahead 
• Audience segmentation – why cultural nuance matters 
• Social media – a looksee into what your peers are up to online 
• And more 

 All really good stuff. Read on… 

I’ll be honest with you, the AIEA 2024 conference produced a tremendous number of insights from so many leaders in our field. It has been a challenge reducing, selecting, and summarizing those I think will be most valuable for you. But sharing great ideas is central to why we publish this blog, so today I’m narrowing down a set of seemingly disparate ideas and tying them together, so they are valuable, actionable, and transferrable to you.  

Hey, use the comments below to let me know if I succeeded. 

For the observant, there is SO very much to take back to your desk from these gatherings. And since we had three Intead staff present and presenting at AIEA 2024, we came away with a lot.  

Events you won’t want to miss:

“Shattering Accessibility Limits in Digital Learning,” a Chronicle of Higher Ed-hosted webinar, featuring Gallaudet President Roberta Cordano and ansrsource CEO Rajiv Narayana. Register here. (All registrants will receive the recording even if they cannot attend. ASL interpreters will be present.)

The AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. This one-day, in-person event in beautiful Niagara, Canada, will explore best practices in developing, managing, assessing, and sustaining the many partnerships that are foundational to international enrollment success. While there, be sure to attend Intead's session all about student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

Many of the conversations we took part in or led at AIEA 2024 centered around fighting for and justifying internationalization budgets. One important notion (credit to David DiMaria, SIO, UMBC, (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) comes from the Japanese concept of Nemawashi (根回し). The term means “turning or taking care of the roots” and suggests that growth comes from taking good care of the foundation. There’s a lot of truth in this. 

As you seek to initiate a new project or grow something already in place, take time to meet with the many stakeholders individually and understand their points of view and concerns before the power brokers or full committee meets to take a vote on your plans and budget requests. Lay the groundwork so that you know the outcome before that decision point arrives. 

This is just one of the many ideas we’ve been ruminating on since our trip to AIEA. Read on for our selection of key actionable takeaways and our slides on data, AI in enrollment, and entrepreneurship in higher ed.