Recruiting Intelligence

Making fun of language and cross-cultural misunderstanding-- should we really do that?  I assure you that all of us who have worked, lived and traveled around the world have had our fair share of mishaps, misunderstandings, and embarrassing moments.  In the end, we believe that good willed individuals around the world understand the difference between naive, unintended mistakes and people who want to learn and, well, the opposite, people who are narrowminded, chauvinistic and only want to know their own ways.  

Universities are getting hit by a tsunami of changes ranging from increased competition among universities as they expand traditional recruiting territories, stronger on-line competition from traditional and new competitive entries, rising tuition and student debt levels as well as a new marketing environment.  I am focusing on the latter change, which is getting less attention given the magnitude of the other factors. 

South Korea, officially known as the Republic of Korea, is one of the most connected countries in the world with high broadband penetration rates and a tech savvy population. The wireless internet is seeing a rapid rise in uptake in South Korea; the number of users of both smartphones and tablets doubled between 2011 and 2012, according to a December 2012 report from the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA).

Our mystery shopper experiment as well as our direct work with university clients has shown us repeatedly that many international admission officers don't have appropriate digital support services, such as email, mobile delivery and publishing tools available. This article will introduce you to several cloud-based services to ease your work with prospective international students. 

We are avid readers of all types of materials so we decided to share with our readers our staff bookshelves. Here is our first installment.  Please feel free to send us recommendations of books you found helpful and would suggest to your colleagues. 

Tuition discounting is a common way to attract students and or to make the university program affordable to potential students. Universities will encounter an even greater mindset challenge in respect to price as digital courses, MOOCs, and hybrid courses proliferate and become more acceptable as an education credential to employers.  At that time, pricing will be an even bigger issue since you are looking at the willingness to pay at all, not the level of payment. I speak from experience since I spent many years of my professional life in the digital content industry convincing consumers to pay for what was available for free elsewhere.  My experience was rooted in the social expression industry marketing paid online greeting cards, instant messenger content and mobile content, generally widely available for free. Nevertheless,we were able to show value and millions of consumers were willing to pay every year for that digital content. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#57. Search Engine Optimization