Recruiting Intelligence

In last week's post, we gave you an international student's user perspective of LinkedIn’s University Finder tool (thank you for all the positive feedback by the way). 

For those of you wanting more digital marketing perspective... Join us in Miami at the ICEF pre-conference Global Marketing Seminar for Education Institutions. We hope to see you there.

This week, we check back in with our international marine engineer, Steven, to see what is driving his decisions about graduate study. Steven is looking for international and US universities with a master’s program in engineering and project management. His LinkedIn search yielded an intriguing list of institutions. In this post, we share Steven’s thoughts on the functionality of the tool and the effectiveness of the universities’ LinkedIn pages that he visited.

Bottom Line: International students seeking to study abroad have far too many choices and need tools like LinkedIn to narrow the field and focus their decision making. Your institution needs to be represented well here to take advantage of the free marketing LinkedIn is providing. Little known universities stand to gain the most.

LinkedIn is known here in the US and globally for its career connections. About a year ago, they launched University Finder. We've written about it and the value of LinkedIn to universities before (Intead LinkedIn Blog Post, March 2015) and wanted to check in again since this social networking tool is a bit unique.

We scanned the internet to find relavant statistics for you and found a few that are important. Of LinkedIn's 380M global users, 13% are 15-34 years old. In the US, 15% are 14-17 years old. Prospective students anyone?

Forbes reports that 48% of LinkedIn users are on there for 2 hrs/wk and 18% are on for 7 hrs/wk. Here's the thing: LinkedIn users are not watching cat videos and just idling away the hours (Pinterest). They are researching specific things, looking for opportunities. This is a work zone!

So we checked in on the university search tool to see what kind of user stats we could find and came up entirely empty. We'd really like to know what kind of traffic this school search feature is getting one year after launch. As we continue to look for that important data, we asked our international blogger, Emily, to take the tool out for a spin and see what it produced.

Bottom Line: The most common university mistake on LinkedIn is making your "company" page focused solely on alumni. This social media channel can be a strong recruitment tool.

Now, digital marketing insights from Emily to help you get inside the head of an international student searching for just the right academic experience...

Welcome back to our Recruiting Intelligence Blog. With this blog, we hope to peak your curiosity.

Our team has been hard at work over the summer reviewing data and conducting research. Stay tuned each week and we will share our best work with you.

And as you plan your international student recruiting activities, consider that Intead will be presenting on topics of Global Marketing at 3 upcoming conferences:

• NAFSA Region XI, Farmington, CT, Oct 20-22
• AIRC Annual Conference, Hollywood, FL, Dec 2-5
• ICEF North America Workshop, Miami Beach, FL, Dec 7-9 (with our highly-rated global marketing seminar)

Today, we are talking about the motivations to seek education. What makes people curious?

You’ve probably heard this: Content is King. In the digital marketing age, this line is talking about the power of great content to draw customers. For example, if the Netflix library shows you the type of movies you like, you are likely to subscribe to the service.

And speaking of subscribers, a note to all of our loyal readers: Intead’s Recruiting Intelligence Blog will take its annual summer hiatus and be back to your inbox the first week of September. We hope you have a great summer.

Now, our intrepid blogger Emily shares her take on how great content can be created and used to attract international students. Be sure to wear your creativity cap as you read. What engaging, sharable content can your institution produce?

You know by now that digital marketing and student recruitment go hand-in-hand. And as those industry tech terms and acronyms get thrown around at meetings, it helps to be in the know. Here's a useful primer to keep you in the loop when everyone starts talking alphabet soup.

You've heard this before, I'm sure: Students don't read email anymore, they are only on social media. Well that's sort of true.

In our work we have talked to a wide range of students and they actually understand that as they enter the real world, they have to do what those "old" people do to communicate online. They have to use that quaint mode of communication called email.

We hope that our readers who are into digital marketing are tracking their email open rates. This is pretty basic stuff at this point and all of the email marketing tools out there will provide this kind of data to help you evaluate the success of your email marketing campaigns.

The question is, when you look at the data, do you know what it is telling you? Wait, are you even looking at the data you have?

This is the thing with analytics. You need to know what you have and how to use it. And so many have it and don't know what to do with it. 

As you move forward and watch your email open rates, you are going to want to take your analytics quite a bit further. Because the real value of tracking your open rates comes when your digital marketing system allows you to follow the digital engagement path all the way to enrolled!

This kind of tracking takes time and diligence but it is the holy grail of digital marketing. Imagine knowing that one particular email you sent vs. another actually converts 3% more international students to enrolled status. That might make a few impressed eyebrows go up around the office. And with each campaign, you can measure your success.

Our intrepid correspondent, Emily R. Henry reporting from Leiden, Netherlands, is going to give you some insight and some basic tips to produce more enticing emails to your prospective international students. Read on...

~ Ben Waxman

In last week’s blog post, we shared with you our  thoughts on Thailand's educational market inlcuding statistics on the trends in Thai students’ studying abroad. Today, in Part 2 of this mini-series we will give you a better sense of how you should be marketing your institution to these prospective students. This includes a more in-depth look at some of the marketing opportunities we see and the social media platforms that are popular in this country.

In this mini-series featuring the higher education landscape of Thailand, we will be sharing our insights about international student recruitment in Thailand, as well as our own tips for marketing your university and how to relate to your prospective students.

Today, in this series we will address the facts and figures of students from Thailand studying abroad including where and what they study. In next week’s blog we will discuss where you should be focusing your marketing efforts online and what you should be providing your new students so that you can take full advantage of this growing market.

Let's take a look at some of the more significant aspects of the Thai education market...

Being Asked to Innovate? Please Fail.

Innovation is a term thrown around a lot. I'm not sure everyone truly understands what it means and what is involved. Kind of like the misunderstanding around the term “entrepreneurial."

Typically, when these terms are used by senior administrators, the conversation includes the concept of “doing more with less” and “finding a new way.” Have these conversations happened in your office? You might want to share this post...

Nafsa - That's a Wrap

As a seasoned admissions colleague and first time Nafsa attendee shared with me last week, “The pace of this conference is insane!” I couldn’t agree more. And if you tried to attend the Brazilian, Turkish and New Zealander’s evening receptions, well, “insane” doesn’t start to cover it.

Following all of the great conversations we had during our 3 presentations at #Nafsa15 (slides to follow next week), we must thank all of our co-presenters and the many attendees who participated, asked questions and fostered the discussions. Digital marketing is new and constantly changing. Learning how other universities have waded into this form of global marketing helps keep us all on the right track.

Following the theme we started last week with a focus on the student experience, today we get the first-hand, personal details from Hongqian Su, a Chinese student who chose to get her Master’s Degree here in the US. The student experience is critical to our understanding where and how to allocate our limited resources for the best results.

Students and Agents

Hongqian Su, from Beijing, has just completed NYU’s prestigious and rigorous master’s program in digital marketing. With degree in hand, she is now moving on from Intead’s internship program as well and heading out into the world. The story of how she came to study in the US is informative to all of us doing international recruiting and admissions work. Note the important and influential roles of her mother and her agent and her reflection on the application process now that she has earned her degree.

Intead regularly analyzes macro data sets about digital marketing and international student mobility. We also engage in small focus groups and one-on-one conversations with international students so we don’t lose our focus on the micro interactions that inform our work.

Thank you Hongqian, for all the great work you did for Intead during your internship. We will miss you while we watch your star continue to rise.  

As for you, our readers, Hongqian’s student experience is concrete and real. Read on to gain some valuable recruiting insights. We've highlighted some key marketing points to make it easy for you.           

 ~ Ben Waxman