Recruiting Intelligence

Conferences come and go each year. And each time we attend a conference or a session, we promise ourselves, “I just want one thing to take away that I can use when I get back to the office.” And as the conference slides into our rearview mirror, do we confirm that one thing? Do we do something to ensure the time and money invested really bring value to our work? 

If we are being honest: Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no. Right? As far as our boss is concerned: Always, YES!  ; -) 

Well, here’s our effort to make an honest person of you (of all of us). We are looking back at New Orleans and NAFSA 2024 (just 6 weeks ago) and sharing our actionable takeaways we think you can use in your day-to-day. With 7 of our Intead team spread out around the conference, it was tough to filter our takeaways down to just a few. We’re bringing out the best 4 for you. 

At this year’s NAFSA, Intead’s Iliana Joaquin teamed up with UMBC SIO Dr. David Di Maria to talk about the realities of using AI in enrollment management. You can grab those slides here.

And I gave a presentation with UC Davis SIO Dr. Joanna Regulska offering new data we conducted with NAFSA on the value of a US degree. You can read about that and grab the slides here.  

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.  Hope to see you there! 

The Resource Center for industry insiders 
Access our international student recruitment research database with over 800 datasets, infographics, webinars, podcasts, articles, and more. A go-to collection of Intead’s 15+ years of industry analysis. Check it out and bookmark for later. 

Read on for a quick-hit summary of 4 key takeaways from the NAFSA 2024 conference conversations we found useful: Visas, Budgeting, Staffing, and Strategic Planning. We’ll keep it short and sweet. 

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.  

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. 

Are you in a position to approve funding requests from others? Or are you the one asking for funds? We have some perspective that can help you either way.

Today, we are offering up a framework for evaluating budget requests based on your ability to achieve defined goals. Just in time for budget season. It's a quick one-pager.

Here's the thing: your budget is more than the sum of its line items - an idea that’s not lost on you. After all, numbers tell stories. Like the dollars that allowed your team to meet international students at the airport. Or, ensured your first-years first connected at your well-planned international student orientation. Or, that scholarship fund that changed yield results. Real stories. Important stories. Made possible, in part, by funds allocated through strategic planning with scarce financial resources. 

Because, where you allocate funds represents what you find most important. In other words: your budget is an expression of your values.

The budgeting framework we offer up today is there to help you conceptualize your budget requests with your goals clearly in mind. Your student-first goals.

Ensuring your budget holds space for these stories, these values, is so important. Because everything from your institution’s mission down to the smallest line item on your Excel spreadsheet should come back to supporting students. All this assumes you have the data that backs up those stories. We are not talking about one-offs and lovely but lonely anecdotes. 

Recently we caught up with our good friend and colleague Dr. Jill Blondin, Associate Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at Virginia Commonwealth University, who by the way was recently named SIO of the Year by IIE (Go Jill!). You may know Jill through the strategic budgeting workshop she runs along with Western Michigan University’s Dr. Paulo Zagalo-Melo, Associate Provost, and Annette Cummins, Assistant Director Global Education and Business Manager. Good news there: Jill and Paulo will be hosting a 2.0 version of their budgeting workshop all about revenue-generating strategies later this year. Watch for updates!  

The perspective Jill offered makes so much sense: “Align your budget with your strategy. Not the other way around.”  

Sage advice because as we all know too well, losing sight of our real goals is all too easy once we get deep into the budgeting weeds. We see numbers and things get tactical fast.  

This is especially true when the dollars we get aren’t the dollars we need. Or think we need. The truth is by keeping our eyes trained on creating a truly student-first experience, international recruitment and student services teams can often accomplish way more than we may at first realize when budget numbers fall flat.  

As Jill said to us, “The international office should not be the alpha and the omega of an international student’s experience.” Indeed, an international office cannot be everything to everyone. Middle ground collaboration is essential. Integrating international students into the full campus experience is the point anyway and your budget should reflect this. More on cross-campus collaboration in another post.  

For today, we offer a quick reboot of our popular “3 Essential Budget Questions: A Framework for Planning.” Use this as a guide to focus and prioritize your annual budget discussions this year.  

Our budget framework asks you to take a step back and reflect on whether your actual results are feeding your goals. This worksheet guidance is yours free for download. As you think through your budget needs and priority projects, keep in mind that you want your budget strategy to reflect your student-first approach.  

Read on to access this useful budgeting tool… 

Worth evaluating: will your 2022 student recruitment plan and budget be relevant for 2023?

Some are saying Search is dead. It is certainly getting increasingly complex. And hello ChatGPT.

An old Chinese adage (loosely translated): May you live in interesting times. The original idea from Ming Dynasty Poet Feng Menglong in1627, "Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人 – thank you Wikipedia!)

The good news: not everything changes. The core questions you use to evaluate next steps remain the same. The truth is, no matter the tactics your strategic plan includes, the framework for budget planning and evaluation is (or should be) constant. If it’s not, let’s talk.

That’s why “3 Essential Budget Questions: A Framework for Planning” is one of our top go-to downloads. And why we often give it a reboot around budget season.

This free download distills any budget request/evaluation process into three essential questions. A quick 2-minute read, our framework for evaluating your plans and whether they merit additional investment, narrows your focus on a consideration of what is truly important to you. Where are the strongest opportunities for growth? What do you truly value? And are you performing at the level that produces desired results? 

Here's the thing, if you are not willing to fund something to get the results you want, then you don’t value those desired results as much as the thing you do decide to fund. What went into that decision? All too often, institutional politics carries more weight than an evaluation of values and growth opportunities. Ouch!

This download will be available for free to our blog subscribers for a limited time. Or, join Intead Plus and your team can access this and all our other Intead Index student recruitment essentials any time the need arises (annual budgeting, new team member training, etc.).

Ready to get your copy of Intead’s budget framework flowchart? Read on…

Leaders of the student enrollment revolution, we’re here for you.

With so much planning going on for an enrollment cycle so very in flux, and past trend data not quite so predictive as it used to be, we thought now would be a good time to reboot one of our most popular posts, “How to Say ‘No’ to Ideas That Aren’t Good Enough.”

It should be a helpful tool at a time when focus is essential in the midst of so many #EdTech solutions and platforms for recruitment and enrollment continually seek your attention.

Read on for the 5 questions every leader must ask and every department must answer when presented with new plans – those that seem great, not so great, or maybe just crazy enough to work.

Join us at #Nafsa2022 in Denver where we will be offering up four presentations with a range of partners on everything from innovative influencer marketing to new ways to maximize the talent of your global recruiting agent network. We'll be focusing on the need for flexibility throughout your student recruitment and enrollment efforts. Schedule a meeting with a simple email.

We’re here to help you focus on the initiatives that will produce results and justify that budget.

This week we are continuing our two-part series on the all-too-common mistakes that happen when recruitment professionals are caught between increasing strain on limited budgets and rising enrollment demands. Didn't get the chance to read part one? You can do so here.

As you read this series, you might think, "yep, I've been there..." or "hey, I would never do that!" ... Either way, as you and your team navigate the uncertain waters of 2021, there is value in strategizing around these common pitfalls as you keep your eyes on enrollment growth.

And if you’re looking for more resources and perspective for your team, we hope you’ll join us for our two virtual sessions at NAFSA 2021 in June.

• In Achieving Global Agility: The Flexibility of Global Campus Options, we’ll be joined by Seamus Harreys from CIEE and Ita Duron from Massachusetts College of Health and Pharmacy Sciences for a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of delivering your academic programs on remote campuses (think: Shanghai). First-hand experiences shared.

• We’ll also be presenting with David DiMaria from University of Maryland, Baltimore County on strategies to help your institution’s international recruitment efforts thrive, even during challenging times, in Going from 0-60: Internationalization. We’ll be talking all things strategic partnerships, team management strategy, techniques for building that all-important leadership buy-in, and the global marketing efforts that pay off.

Let's get into it — Part 2 of recruitment mistakes of the desperate... 

Many enrollment leaders are reporting terrific application rates for fall 2021, which is certainly welcome news. Campus enrollment numbers look promising for a number of reasons, primary among them:

• Campuses are planning to open this fall with in-person learning as an option — highly desirable after this past year’s Zoom school.
• Prospective students look like they will find summer jobs (unlike last year), suggesting they can afford to return to university.

However, there is plenty we do not know as we write this post in early May 2021.

Where India looked like they had successfully kept COVID-19 at bay, more recently, the country has become inundated. As of this writing, many areas of Canada are taking significant precautions to stem the spread. Here in the US, there is a common expectation that the country is on a positive trajectory with regard to the pandemic, and yet, India and Canada thought they were in the clear not too long ago. Our point: the future is murky.

With ambiguity, comes fear and inaction for some; for others, opportunity.

Let’s assume that as summer 2021 hits, your enrollment numbers are not where they should be. Budget dollars are extremely tight. And yet, growth is demanded. What to do?

Often (more often than we all care to admit and especially in times of crisis like we’ve experienced in the past year), we are approached by academic leaders from institutions around the world who are desperate and seeking student recruiting advice.

More often than not, institutions are hung up on the common challenges of people, tools, and budget. This is true of most service industries (and, in fact, product driven industries as well). There is no lack of ideas and opportunities. The only thing holding them back is the difficulty of aligning the team (people) and willingness to risk the funds (because there are no guarantees of success).

Note, an A-level team with B- or C-level tools will still crush it. B-level team with A-level tools? Not so much.

Back in 2018, we published a two-part “Mistakes of the Desperate” series, discussing the all-too-common mistakes we witness academic leaders making as they navigate enrollment challenges. Those who have been in the industry for a number of years have seen this state of affairs at different times: the pressure to produce without the time and resources to do it right. And looking back at those times, we all know what the result was: ineffective and disappointing.

In this particularly dynamic time for student enrollment and with so much ambiguity around what will happen next, we think this series deserves a second look as your team gears up for the next recruiting cycle. 

And for additional resources for your team navigating this challenging year, we hope you will tune it for our two sessions at the upcoming annual NAFSA (virtual) conference in June:

• Achieving Global Agility: The Flexibility of Global Campus Options on the value of global campuses and how to implement them in a nimble, flexible way (presenters: Intead with Seamus Harreys from CIEE and Ita Duron from Massachusetts College of Health and Pharmacy Sciences University); and
• Going from 0-60: Internationalization about the challenges and successes of taking your university’s internationalization efforts to the next level (presenters: Intead with David DiMaria from University of Maryland, Baltimore County).

Read on for three common mistakes academic leaders make when desperately trying to improve student enrollment numbers and how your institution can avoid them.

Brilliant and creative enrollment professionals, we know your pain.

So many great ideas, so little time, and so little budget.

It’s the refrain of higher education (that, and “Don’t talk to me during application season”). And while we know you want to tackle everything with an enthusiastic “yes”, saying “no” more often than “yes” is nearly always required to keep your institution and your strategy on track.

With budget season inching towards the finish line, we know you’re already thinking about putting that budget into action in the new fiscal year. We also know that making the most of that budget will require focus, a concrete plan, and most importantly, that discipline to say “no” to lots of shiny new ideas that pass you by.

Steve Jobs said it best: “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” But with great ideas and options coming at you from all sides, how do you decide what will maximize value for your institution?

With this enrollment cycle murkier than ever and past performance clearly not indicative of future success, turning your gaze on some downhome marketing truths is a good idea.

Read on for five key questions to ask yourself next time that lightbulb moment hits you and your team. Our insights will help you hone your efforts on the ideas that will produce results and justify that budget.

Is it moving forward? At the pace you want? Are you getting where you need to go?

If you are like most institutions, the answer is, “no.”

Or at least, the answer is, “Not as fast and at the level of quality I need and want.” So, here’s the most important question: Why not?

Budgeting for Student Recruitment

The season is upon us and whether you are submitting your budget for approval or evaluating the budget requests others submit to you, we thought we might offer some insight for your process.

Business school professors love to apply the latest 4 square analysis that simplifies complex industry quandaries. The marketing texts (Kotler anyone?) are full of flowcharts and other grids to help you make sense of the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Placement and Promotion). And then there is the ever-elusive ROI analysis.

And the best line of all that sums up our most cynical fears: We will beat the excel spreadsheet into submission until it tells us what we want to hear.

Oh, those budgeting meetings and the spreadsheet assumptions. How often do we go back at the end of the year and take a look at what we projected and what we actually achieved before we approve the next project budget?

Not often enough and usually not with enough of a critical eye.

Sometimes, having outside expertise performing an analysis or assessment of your processes and capacity against your strategic goals can really help move an institution forward. Send us a quick email to learn more about what Intead can do to help.

Download Intead’s 3 Essential Budget Questions – a 1-pager that offers a simplified approach to considering any budget request/evaluation. With this framework for evaluating your plans and whether they merit additional investment, you’ll take those complex quandaries down to a basic starting point to help identify where the opportunities for growth really are. We think you’ll want to share this one widely.

Read on to access the downloadable chart...