Recruiting Intelligence

Today we are sharing our Mystery Shopper experiment which we had previously shared on our blog. We've received such a significant response to it, we want to be sure our Insight subscribers see this.

A few weeks back we shared our insights (What Millennials Really Want) on a report by Boston Consulting Group focused on understanding differing perceptions about Millennials and how enrollment managers might adjust their efforts to attact this group. We offered ideas about interacting with Millennials in ways they prefer. This week, building on the theme of understanding Millennials, we found a recently published report by The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Salesforce Foundation: "College Admissions in the Social Media Age" (requires registration).
Social media continues to be one of the most challenging communications channels for universities (and companies) to manage. The medium offers tremendous ability to segment audiences and customize automated outreach. It also offers unparalleled opportunities to track and analyze your marketing efforts/investments.

By and large, international student enrollment in U.S. universities has been growing steadily for the past 60 years. (We acknowledge a few years during the six decade period that show a minor decline.) We just got back from another exciting and well attended national Nafsa conference in St. Louis which confirmed the incredible interest by academic institutions in internationalizing their campus and growing international student enrollment. Yet, as our summer and fall efforts to recruit heat up, we need to throw a litte bit of cold water to dampen our excitement, if that metaphor works for you.

Do you know where on the internet Chinese students look for information on study abroad opportunities? If you answered Baidu, the most commonly used search engine in China, you are more in tune than most Americans.

Many factors influence prospective students' university application decisions. In the U.S., we always worry about the misbehaving student tour guide, not connecting with the students and upsetting the parent. In the international recruitment process, political issues and visa changes are out of our control. So are safety issues -- consider the tragic events in Boston recently.

Millennials are the core "customer group" for undergraduate and graduate programs. For university marketers understanding their target audience is absolutely crucial to reaching and attracting prospective students. Obviously the "education program" is not defined by admissions staff and university marketers, so academic staff has an equal stake in understanding the desires, priorities, likes and dislikes of this generation. Designing a compelling offering with marketing messages that attract and core academic content that delivers on the marketing promise...well, we can all dream of that perfect world. Trying to achieve it is what keeps us employed.

During the past couple of weeks we have analyzed international student data for trends showing us which universities have been successful with their international student recruitment activities. See Consider the Competition (Insight 4/10/13) and the blogs onOhio and Massachusetts. One of our readers suggested that we compare trends between universities using independent international recruiting agencies and those using only internal resources for their international enrollment efforts.

Customer demographics are important for many businesses. Education is no exception. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) publishes a must-read report for higher education executives, senior admissions officers and trustees creating mid to long-term strategies for academic institutions.

WICHE’s April policy insights “Demography as Destiny: Policy Considerations in Enrollment Management” provides highlights of the detailed report “Knocking on the College door.” The report’s ideas are not necessarily new or surprising, but they are well documented and graphically presented. Helpful state-by-state analyses are available (here is the example for Ohio).