Recruiting Intel Digest - The Most Useful Stuff from Q2 2024

For those of you who are regular readers, we know the Intead team is guilty of generating too much value all at once. Not apologizing for it. 

The Intead team has cranked out 3 industry reports and 2 book chapters with never before gathered data. True to form, this stuff is absolutely instructive for the ways you will want to position your academic offerings.

Our latest research is THAT good. 

If you haven’t kept up on what we’ve published recently on the international student experience (3 separate datasets!), don’t worry. This post will catch you right up. It’s your quarterly industry insights at-a-glance, and this round includes new Intead research with our partners at NAFSA, Studyportals and F1Hire along with our own view of industry news. 

Our next opportunity to meet!  

EducationUSA Forum, Washington, D.C., July 30-August 1. Ben and Virginia Commonwealth University SIO Jill Blondin will share insights on Navigating Budget Challenges in International Recruitment: Practical Strategies for Every Phase.  

Be in touch! We’ll buy the coffee. 

In today's Q2 Wrap Up post you will find...

Access groundbreaking data on: 

• How international graduates are finding jobs in the US job market, and the regions most apt to hire them 
• International graduate employment stats, including specifics on salaries, employers and the institutions that are making successful employer connections  
• How the US election is shaping international student decisions 

Industry points of view on: 

• Why Guyana is an emerging student recruitment source 
• How to take a data-driven, actionable approach to budgeting for international enrollment  

Marketing insights such as: 

• Economists’ new take on the ROI of your degree 
• Knowing when you’re ready to tap into your international alumni network 
• Getting your WhatsApp Business account up and running 
• The enduring value of email marketing 
• Messaging for the (really) small screen 
• Link to the new higher ed industry pub: Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth. 

Read on… 

There’s a lot to think about here. So, grab your ball cap and sunglasses, pull up a folding beach chair, be sure you put on the sunscreen, and get yourself engrossed. We recommend you have a pen handy to jot notes to yourself and your team (old school, we know. We understand if you take in the digital content. Some of us still like paper as we read. Please don’t judge.). 

Onward to our summary of, and links to, the latest news coming from Intead this past quarter. Always here if you’d like to discuss how to best apply these insights to your institution (info@intead.com).  

3 Must-Read Reports and 1 Book to Inform Your Thinking/Planning 

As we labor to understand the global landscape for international student recruiting, this new research, done in partnership with F1 Hire, takes a hard look at US career options and outcomes for international graduates. We employed US Dept of Labor stats cleaned and analyzed in new ways as well as proprietary data from F1 Hire users to unearth key drivers of international student decision-making. Did your state or your institution make our lists of top performers? What we learned was fascinating. 

How valuable is a US degree for international students? No, really, how valuable is it? NAFSA and Intead gathered international student alumni data from 12 US higher ed institutions to find out. Telling research on OPT/CPT outcomes and how these graduates contribute to the US economy. What we learned will have a direct impact on international student recruitment and offer perspective on US immigration policy. Learn more here. 

A thought-provoking comparison of today’s international student perspectives to those expressed back in 2016 and 2017 on the precipice of and in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election. You may recall who won that one. Our latest Know Your Neighborhood (KYN) report lays bare undeniable shifts in priorities of international education-seekers, including their current perspective on choosing to study in the US based on the winner of the 2024 US presidential election. Read more here.  

Check it out: Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth, a new book by Star Scholars Press just hit the digital shelves. Intead is honored to join a serious set of luminary authors by contributing two chapters – one on leveraging international alumni and the other on updating your approach to digital marketing. The full collection of articles focuses on the need to modernize international education in response to changes in international student mobility. The link to purchase the book is in our blog post here. Happy reading!  

4 Tools and Tips to Help You Succeed (and they are free!) 

This 8-question self-evaluation is a quick way to see just how prepared your team is for leveraging an effective international alumni network. Our online form provides instant counsel on tactics you can deploy to move forward. There is more counsel in the chapter we wrote for the new Star Scholars’ publication of Entry Points to US Education: Accessing the Next Wave of Growth described just above. 

Setting up a WhatsApp Business account is easier than you think. 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. Read part 1 of this series for the quick 11-step account set-up process. And part 2 on how to put it to work for you. We had so many colleagues write effusive thank you notes to us following the publication of these two posts it made us blush. 

Email is 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. And this tool is only valuable later in the recruitment funnel. Some of you don’t believe us, we know. So, it’s a good idea to read this post. 

With the amount of time prospective students spend online and specifically on their phones, you’d think connecting with them would be easier. This post offers 5 steps to energize your smartphone messaging to boost student recruitments. 

3 Deep Thinking Marketing Budget Considerations to Move You Forward  

1. Yes, you should consider Guyana, but here’s the thing…
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. Now it’s on track to be a top 20 oil producer by 2027 and has been reclassified as a high-income country by the World Bank. 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. 

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. The session and slides were extremely well received, especially in the currently ambiguous, post-covid student mobility climate. Early birds got these slides for free when we posted them to our blog (blog post available here). The slides are now available exclusively to our Intead Plus members. Find out more here.  

3. It's time to rethink your ROI math.
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 at the National Bureau of Economic Research 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. Get the full scoop here. 

Busy quarter, right? Now, on to the next. But first, happy 4th of July to our U.S. readers!