Recruiting Intelligence

Let’s get a sneak peek at what the Intead team has in store for our fellow AIRC conference colleagues this year. A powerful group of student enrollment professionals will be gathering in Miami in just a few days. We can’t wait!

At this year’s AIRC conference (Miami, Dec 8-11), I will be sharing what we have learned recently through our work with three outstanding institutions. Our two conference session presentations this year speak to getting students to become aware of, and engaged by, the specific learning opportunities your institution offers. We hope you can join us.

• Finding and Managing Brand Ambassadors for Recruitment
  • Intead with Northeastern University’s Kirsten Feddersen, Senior Director of International Enrollment Management. This one is truly a cutting edge take on influencer marketing and Gen Z attraction.
• Innovative Recruiting Approaches for Specialty Grad Programs
  • Intead with Fordham Law School’s Toni Jaeger-Fine, Assistant Dean of International and Non-J.D. Programs and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences’ Ita Duron, Executive Director of Global Strategies & International Programs. This one looks at a range of creative student recruiting alternatives to digital campaigns.

We are all eager for first-hand experiential learning opportunities and we complement that with the welcome release of the latest data from IIE’s Open Doors, NAFSA’s economic impact analysis, Common App's data, and the National Clearinghouse’s enrollment numbers that help inform the marketing magic that underpins our work here at Intead.

Read on for a bit of pre-conference insight into why these two conference session presentations rose to the top of our list this year.

At the very least, we bet you have some great stories to share.

That’s not much of a silver lining from this past unnerving year. But it’s a start.

Let’s talk about opportunities to learn from each other and think bigger.

In the past year, our education community has collectively navigated some uncharted and very choppy waters. You may have emerged better for it, with new processes and contingency plans in place, cross-functional partnerships strengthened, remote work and learning infrastructure upgraded, and a renewed outlook on your institution’s long-term strategy.

Given this year of rapid activity and transformational growth, we’re more excited than ever to gather (virtually) with leaders and change-makers from over 100 countries at this year’s NAFSA conference from June 1-4th. 

Intead has been attending and presenting at NAFSA for more than a decade, and every year we are energized by the idea-sharing that takes place and inspired by the power of our global community.

This year’s NAFSA is all about thinking big about the future of international education — the latest innovations, strategies, and best practices shared from your peers across the field as we build for the next generation. Intead is honored to be presenting two sessions this year in partnership with our esteemed colleagues from leading academic institutions and global partners on forward-looking global strategies:

• Achieving Global Agility: The Flexibility of Global Campus Options
  A discussion on the challenges and opportunities of delivering your academic programs at turnkey remote campuses around the world. First-hand experiences will be shared by Ita Duron, Executive Director of Global Strategies and International Programs at Massachusetts College of Health and Pharmacy Sciences, an institution that has already put this global approach into practice (and reaped the benefits).
  
  Also joining the conversation will be Seamus Harreys, Vice President of Global Enrollment at CIEE sharing how CIEE’s global campus models in Shanghai, Seoul, Legon, and many other cities around the world have helped institutions navigate student mobility challenges. Lots of info about how to adopt the global campus approach at your own institution. Tune in: June 4th at 9am EDT

• Going from 0-60: Internationalization
  We’ll be talking all things internationalization with David DiMaria, Associate Vice Provost, International Education at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, focusing on how to build leadership buy-in and navigate typically slow-moving internal processes for rapid results.
  
  You’ll learn valuable team management and partnership strategies as well as how to establish global recruitment marketing programs that produce measurable enrollment results. This topic is a frequent discussion area on the NAFSA Enrollment and Leadership listserv forums. Join us for this as a Tune In Anytime event.

Read on to for a few preview tips on how these sessions can help move your global strategy forward.

I’m here at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference with nearly 28,000 of my best friends who all REALLY appreciate nerd humor. They are wicked smart and doing things that make all of our lives so much better. It's all about the science.

This is a collection of very studious folks from all over the world. More than 40% of SfN’s ~37,000 members hail from countries beyond US borders. And when they all gather to discuss their science, they are representing academic institutions and other research-focused entities from just about everywhere.

Among them are Principal Investigators, post-docs, grad and undergraduate students. And they represent all those institutions where the next set of neuroscience graduates will one day work. Yes, research leads to careers.

There is so much youthful energy here. So many students developing their careers alongside luminaries in the field.

Sitting in on neuroscience lectures is far different than the digital marketing sessions I usually participate in. Soon, I'll be applying my cortex and synaptic activity to student recruitment marketing again -- a much more familiar topic ; -)

This December, the Intead team will be attending the TABS conference on private boarding high schools, ICEF North America and AIRC all about international student recruitment. We hope you will find time to escape your desk and breakroom and join us. We will learn together and improve together. Send us an email if you’d like to find time for a coffee together.

Read on to download our Intead Index on conferences in our field. We’d welcome your input as this index needs updating. Where do you find value when you attend an industry conference? Please let us know by adding to the comments below.

This week, we are just returning from the whirlwind Florida adventure that is the annual AIRC and ICEF conferences. This is our 9th year taking this trip, connecting with colleagues, sharing ideas, presenting new data and working together to drive innovation.

There was much discussion around emerging digial marketing techniques, assessment of our current global political situation and the students who are at the heart of it all. As with all higher ed conferences, we find ourselves loving the swirl of new ideas, invigorated, encouraged and looking to share our experience with all of you. 

I invite you to have a quick read through some of the insights from the two conferences and scroll down to enjoy a brief video we produced with several industry friends and colleagues who each have a deep and unique expertise in areas including: launching global brands, innovating, connecting people around the world and crunching data.

As we head into conference season (who are we kidding, it’s always conference season), we find ourselves wandering expo halls looking at the many vendors, each professing to be the best, the most unique, the most qualified. And they all seem to have a "tech" solution.

You've noticed this too, right? We've been around the block a few times and seeing all the claims can bring on a certain expo floor fatigue. How to know which vendor, which tool, is right for your type of institution? There are certainly some worth avoiding and others worth evaluating.

The Intead team provides our clients with industry perspective to help navigate the many options all saying, "We recruit students for you." And the reality is, you don't get students without putting in some of your own elbow grease, always.

Ahead of us are 3 great events, Can We Meet You There?

1. Nafsa Region XI – Oct 23-25 in Portland, ME
2. AIRC's 10th Anniversary Conference – Come to our pre-conference workshop for a full day of digital marketing and budget planning! Dec 5-8 in Weston, FL
3. ICEF Miami – Dec 10-12 in Miami Beach, FL

We are presenting our research and tips at each of these events sharing the dais with your peers and other great industry leaders. Let us know if you'll be there. See conference links below.

Now let's return to the expo floor. How to navigate the obstacles and find the gems...

Maybe it's the jet lag (it's not) but this most recent international jaunt has left me thinking big and getting a bit sentimental about the field we are in. You know all those cynics who refer to the international student recruiting work we all do with disdain saying, “It’s really only about the tuition dollars the international students pay?” Perhaps you can send them a link to this post and shift their thinking just a bit.

Last week I was in Moscow presenting on global digital marketing at The Forum on International Education. It was an honor to be invited to play a role in this effort by the Russian Ministry of Education as the government there implements an audacious plan to grow from about 230K international students to more than 700K choosing Russia for their post-secondary education. No small task.

At a time when the American and Russian heads of state are spitting at each other, I found myself in Moscow learning from my colleagues from around the world and taking time to visit many of Russia’s iconic and moving cultural achievements. Each evening, back in my hotel room, CNN told me about how our world leaders were acting in ways that left me more determined than ever.

Read on for reflections on the value of your work and the one important thing you can do right now in the face of international turbulence.

With this past week, the world of student recruiting is in a bit of an uproar here in the US and around the world. As we review the executive orders, court decisions and various statements from university presidents, NAFSA and the like, we know that many are gathering to raise our concerns and consider the options before us.

In times of great change, there is a strong inclination to take a wait and see approach. In our view, we see opportunity. Not to make light of the situation. It is quite serious. Nevertheless, planning is always valuable, regardless of how unclear the future may be.

We just completed our first annual International Student Recruitment Bootcamp held in San Diego. An intrepid, forward thinking set of universitites, boarding high schools and other academic industry providers gathered for two days to share their experiences and map out plans to move forward despite the turmoil in our industry. Whether you were an attendee, a speaker, partner or sponsor, the Bootcamp was a success because of you.

And special thanks to Zepur Solakian at CGACC for her leadership.

Our goal, as always, is to help you make smart recruiting and marketing decisions. We think everyone came away with useful information, tools, best practices and insights into international student recruiting and digital marketing and that you will be able to share that knowledge with others in your office who were not able to attend. From the conversations we overheard in our speaker sessions, break-out groups and networking receptions, and even the 3K sunrise run, it seems everyone was able to connect with others facing similar recruiting challenges and share solutions to overcome them. We think that's pretty cool.

We are already thinking about next year's conference and can't wait to share details. And for those unable to attend this year, we will be sharing marketing planning material and worksheets from the conference in the weeks ahead, so check back often! We want you to be able to plan and move forward even when the headwinds are strong.

In the meantime, we want to thank our speakers for bringing their expertise to our conference attendees....Want to see who spoke? It's a truly incredible line up and we owe them all such gratitude for their willingness to share. 

2015 was a strong year for international student recruiting. And looking back, our blog was filled with many new insights, guest writers, and the important research and trends in international enrollment marketing. As we dive into 2016, we wanted to take the time to showcase what all of you told us was most valuable: our 7 most read blog posts of 2015. 

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.