Recruiting Intelligence

What is the value of having studied  internationally? When international students return home, are they able to find work?

With the recent economic upheaval in Brazil, Cláudia Osna Geber's first-hand experience in that market is invaluable as we consider our international recruiting plans. If you are currently recruiting from Brazil or are planning to recruit international students from this country, Claudia's perspective is a MUST READ.

Cláudia is a native Brazilian who is now living in Curitiba after having lived in New York City with her husband for one year. During her time in the U.S., she enrolled at NYU and Manhattan Institute of Management taking classes in international business and integrated marketing. Cláudia also interned for Intead in our New York City office.

Now in the job-hunt process in Brazil's hyper-competitive market, Cláudia shares with us how her international study experience is being received by recruiters and employers in Brazil. And she shares her thoughts on the value of recruiting there today.

Raise your hand if you are already onto the recruiting potential in Chile. On the fast track as an emerging economy, Chile is attracting more attention from the international community. Chileans see value in receiving an education and gaining relevant experience abroad. Chile’s movement toward a more global perspective will likely help recruiters enhance their recruiting capabilities in the country.

While small by many measures (a population of nearly 17M people and just 8,000 students studied abroad in 2012), Chile's economy has seen steady and consistent growth for the past 35 years. That trend has slowed a bit recently, but the long-term trend is still up and impressive. 

Our long-term readers will recognize the approach this post takes to analyzing a specific country and its potential for international student recruitment. In other posts, we've focused on many Asian and Southeast Asian countries. We thought we'd look to the America's today. And with this post we offer one last plug to the lastest research we will be presenting at the upcoming AIRC and ICEF conferences in December. There are still a few slots left for our 3rd annual ICEF Pre-conference Global Marketing Seminar for Education Institutions.

Bottom Line: While some challenges stand in the way of attracting Chileans to the U.S., 2,513 Chilean students chose U.S. institutions in 2014, as reported by IIE's latest Open Doors Data. The common barriers to international education (language and financial constraints) are beginning to be removed and the U.S. is becoming an increasingly attractive education destination for young Chileans. Well crafted social media campaigns and a solid agent network are likely your best bets for reaching those seeking to study abroad. An ESL program or other language support is going to be an important element for U.S. institutions recruiting from this region. Finally, we recommend focusing on your institution's strongest graduate level academic programs rather than diluting your message by promoting your university overall. Be bold and clear with what differentiates your institution.

Now, let's turn to Emily so she can tell us what time it is in Chile...

Do you get a lot of credit card offers in your mailbox? We certainly do. Those banks are paying a tremendous amount for all that direct mail. And they have analyzed the ratios and response rates to know beyond any doubt that RETAINING a current customer is FAR less expensive than RECRUITING a new one. Yet they still know that spending marketing dollars to get a new one is worth it, if done right. 

This week is about recruiting and retention.

Last week we borrowed from grocery store market research to learn about marketing your student outcomes. This week we will borrow from industry again to consider how international student experience relates to student retention. In other words, how to keep your customers happy. (Hint: listen to them).

We know that student retention is important. Your goal is to get them in the door AND see to it that they earn their degree. That produces satisfaction for everyone involved, on many levels. Here’s the thing: NAFSA’s research says your perspective on what keeps a student is likely different than the student’s perspective on the same thing.

Bottom Line: Current research from NAFSA suggests that international students want more internship and job opportunities and they will move around to find them. Setting clear expectations about what you have to offer before students arrive and listening to what they are really seeking from you will go a long way toward creating the student experience that results in retention and degrees earned.

We are full of questions today, and Emily is ready to step out of the box and tell us more about how student experience drives retention. And how you can drive student experience.

This week we want to compare your university education to roasting a chicken. No, really.

We want you to consider a lesson learned in the grocery industry about marketing. What in the world would your international student recruiting plans have to do with roast chicken you ask? Perhaps not quite as much of a stretch as you might think.

Here at Intead, we are always looking at what industry does, how it markets, what it tracks. And we apply those lessons to academia. It keeps us on our toes.

Bottom Line: Supermarkets learned a while back that advertising focused on cooked meals attracts customers better than showing raw ingredients. For university enrollment, focusing on jobs and outcomes is critical in today’s academic marketing. The message resonates with students and parents alike. So you might want to rethink all those images of happy students on the quad, or engaged in classrooms. The ascending career needs to be present, and perhaps even dominant, in your advertising.

We will be discussing these approaches to academic marketing at the upcoming AIRC and ICEF conferences in December. Are you going? We’d love to meet you face-to-face instead of keyboard to screen! There are still a few slots left for our 3rd annual ICEF Pre-conference Global Marketing Seminar for Education Institutions.

More on using outcomes in your marketing below.

Recruiting agents are increasingly used by our university clients these days. There is far more ease in the move in this direction since NACAC removed a significant barrier. As institutions consider the options, it is important to understand how to use agents well. It would be nice if someone were to write a book about that, don’t you think?

Turns out there is a lovely online resource, an e-book that your peers have widely contributed to, reviewed and accepted as a valuable source. You can download it for free right HERE.

As fortune would have it, this e-book was written and produced by Intead (heard of those guys?) and more than 2,000 downloads later, the e-book continues to find its way into the hands of admissions teams researching best practices.

Bottom Line: Agents are a reliable way to outsource your sales processes to distant lands ONLY IF you put real budget dollars behind making those sales representatives well-versed in your university’s selling points. Sales reps can’t sell a product they don’t know well. Meet us at the AIRC and ICEF conferences coming up in December and we can teach you a whole lot more. Our ICEF Pre-conference Global Marketing Workshop for Education Institutions is filling up.

Now for some perspective on what agents do and how to figure out if they are doing it well for you.

With digital content as the driving force behind international student recruiting, it is essential to be innovative with your content strategy. Certainly, there are challenges to this. There always seem to be new tools, digital platforms and social media options available. How to keep up?

Well, at Intead, all of this stuff is critical to our work; it's far too important to us to fall behind. That is, in part, why we write and share this blog. We all need to stay current.

So for those without the time for the amazing link at the end of this blog…

Bottom Line: Capture their interest and lead them to the deeper decision making content. This is creative digital marketing’s mantra. What do most universities do? Lead with boring emails and web pages that offer the deeper decision making content. And that makes you just one of many out there doing the same, tired thing. If all the options look the same, mostly students just hit delete.

In this weeks blog, Emily tells us why that is doubly awful. Because: sharing.

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?