Recruiting Intelligence

This we know: this is a time to prepare, as in, think 5 years out. #PIELIVE24 in Boston brought industry leaders together as we all move toward the next Trump presidency. Challenging travel and visa regulations will be headed our way. Join us in developing the plans that focus on the international students we support and the progress we need for everyone in this field.

We have work to do.  

As one fearless leader, Fanta Aw, said in a recent NAFSA town hall, “We’re not allowed to be tired!” The Intead team found this rallying cry inspiring. Of course, we are tired. It has been a long year. Nevertheless, we all need to pick ourselves up, face forward, and use all the power we can muster to support the changes we know are worth it. 

Kicking off the PIE event in Boston, Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, pointed to the need to build on our collective strength to find a clear, unified voice. She asked us to use that voice to bolster our individual work and to serve as the foundational support our allies in Congress need from us so that they can ensure the US remains a strong, safe, desirable destination for international students. 

If you are looking for enrollment growth in the current environment, you'll find a Pro Tip at the end of this post you really don't want to miss!

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIEA in March and NAFSA in May, we'll be presenting our latest findings at both. Let us know  if you want to connect at either of those two events. 

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

PIE Live Boston wasn’t all politics and regulatory hurdles, though. The rising potential of Africa as a student source market, building trust on campus, university partnerships, and the value of US degrees were all hot topics. Intead’s presentations focused on how to read the latest IIE Open Doors data and our Connecting Dots research about career outcomes for international students. If you’ve not downloaded that yet, find it HERE.

I was honored to share the main stage to foster discussion around the hot-off-the-press IIE student mobility numbers with esteemed colleagues Clare Overmann, CEO of AIEA; John Sherman, CEO of The Evaluation Company; and Maureen Manning, senior vice president of strategy and insights for The PIE, US, who did a truly deft job moderating the discussion. 

A clear-eyed look at the new Open Doors data at PIE Live ‘24.

A key insight from that presentation: as the number of students desiring an international education grows globally, and given the fact that a growing number of them will have less money to spend on that education (see discussion below), lesser expensive degree options are going to attract more students.  

Your To Do: make a strategic decision about whether you want to: 

• Offer less expensive options (think certificates, scholarships, accepting more credits from prior activities to reduce time (and cost) to completed degree, among other options) OR  
• Develop stronger value propositions that make your institution stand out as worth the higher cost.  

Changing global dynamics have pushed the Intead team to focus our recent research on unearthing real data on international student career outcomes. We will be doing more research on the topic in the months ahead. Reach out if you’d like to be a part of it. We’ll also be presenting on this topic at AIEA and at NAFSA in 2025. We hope you’ll join us at those sessions and participate in the discussion.  

At PIE LIVE Boston we were joined by Kerry Salerno, vice president of marketing and communications at Babson College, and Andrew Chen, CEO of F1 Hire,for another presentation oncareer pathways available to international graduates. Standing room only for that session as institutions are clearly getting the message about arming prospective students with useful career outcome data.  

In total, the event brought together 330 colleagues from 25 countries. Since many of you (our faithful readers) were not there, we thought we would bring a bit of the conference to you. Read on to access Intead slides from our sessions on the new Open Doors data as well as career outcomes for F1 students.

We’re going to state the obvious and break it down. Because it seems some of your colleagues may need to hear this. Better coming from us than you.  Helpful perspective: historical data tell us that 30% to 40% of all US institutions see declining international enrollment in any given year. So, for your consideration...

First: If you are not seeing the enrollment results you want, something must change to produce new outcomes. (Someone wise has said: insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. Apparently, it wasn’t Albert Einstein. Nevertheless, it holds up).   

Second: If you want to increase university enrollment fast, you’re going to have to put real money into the process. You’re likely going to continue doing what you already do because even though you are seeing diminishing returns, you can’t afford to lose them. So, new funds must be added to the existing budget.   

All obvious, right? Well, it seems folks need to hear it. But we have more to share here to help you get the numbers ... 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  

• AIRC, Seattle-Bellevue, Washington, Dec. 4-7, 2024. Our team is here now with 3 powerful sessions on budgeting, pathways, and streamlining admissions processes. Come find us. 
• AIEA, Houston, Texas, March 02-05, 2025
• NAFSA Annual, San Diego, CA,  May 27-30, 2025

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Third: If you cannot access additional funds, you will have to cut something you are currently doing and reallocate those funds. If your leadership is of the innovative risk-taker mindset, you can stop doing some of your current, less effective things and put that money into the new thing. Your stronger results will be slow to materialize, and your leadership needs to stay the course (not pull the funding) when fabulous new results do not magically appear in year one. To maintain internal support, you must track your activity and report on the results along the way.

What you want with all the tracking is your ability to provide your leadership with the confidence that there is learning and progress going on that will lead to stronger results in the next couple of years. Know that your leadership is facing down a whole lot of criticism including daggers from across campus trying to remove your funding. The dagger throwers are expecting your plans to fail.  

Fourth (getting into the details): You have options when you think about innovating to produce new, stronger results. We review 12 primary recruiting options when we run our conference workshops on student recruiting. Today we take a quick look at each tactic with a careful eye on cost and flexibility.

Read on for our 12 recruitment option tips and perspective… 

The US continues to be a top destination for international students. As other anglophile countries find new reasons to limit their student intake (we’re looking at you Canada, Australia, and UK), there is still competition for student attention. Now is no time for US institutions to rest on their laurels.  

The macro numbers around student mobility are always interesting. But the fact is that each institution has tremendous potential in any given market if it plays its unique cards well.  

It starts with market intelligence, understanding your consumer, their motivations, influencers, and how the unique attributes of your institution relate to those consumer insights. There are questions you and your recruitment team are asking: 

• Are you reaching the right prospective international students?  

• Are your markets diversified enough? Targeted enough?  

• How do you know if you are doing all of this well? 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  
- NAFSA Region XI, Hartford, Connecticut, Oct. 27-29, 2024
- PIE Live North America, Boston, MA, Nov. 19-20, 2024
- AIRC, Seattle-Bellevue, Washington, Dec. 04-07, 2024 -- including our pre-conference global marketing workshop. A full day of Intead global intel (lunch included ; -). Details here. 

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Over the past year we’ve offered insights into regions we think are well worth watching on 3 continents – China, India, Vietnam, Tanzania, Guyana. Each of these countries offers something interesting for international student recruiters to think about. All won’t be right for every institution, but each are right for some.  

Read on to understand how we’re thinking about these markets and to link to our more in-depth articles each one.  

The plight of your visa-seeking international grads may best be summed up in this quote, “Given the choice between a prostate exam and sponsoring a work visa, hiring managers will probably choose the former.”  

Zeke Hernandez, a Wharton School professor and author of The Truth About Immigration, gave us a good chuckle with that one when we read it in an August 2024 issue of The Economist. It’s funny because it’s true as the meme goes.   

In an analysis done by ed tech company F1 Hire, only 1.6% of the 1.5 million job postings analyzed had sponsorship-friendly language in the job description. This research was part of Intead’s Connecting Dots report How International Students are Finding US Jobs, published in May. If you haven’t seen it yet, find it here. Our analysis of US Department of Labor data and proprietary data from F1 Hire offers job market insights you won’t find anywhere else. 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  
- NAFSA Region XI, Hartford, Connecticut, Oct. 27-29, 2024
- PIE Live North America, Boston, MA, Nov. 19-20, 2024
- AIRC, Seattle-Bellevue, Washington, Dec. 4-7 -- including our pre-conference global marketing workshop. A full day of Intead global intel (lunch included ; -). Details here. 

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 800+ articles, slides, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Understanding career pathways for international students is an increasingly necessary topic for those of us who advocate for and work on behalf of this valuable and important student population. In fact, 84% of international students cite career advancement as their top motivator for studying abroad. And >99% believe it’s why their families want them to study abroad (source: Intead’s Know Your Neighborhood 2024 report).  

But it’s so much more than that. These bright, highly skilled students are a crucial part of the economy. As pointed out in a recent Economist article, immigrants account for 14% of the US population yet are responsible for 36% of the country’s total innovation. It makes sense why. They bring not just knowledge, but new ideas, perspectives, and networks that help shape their work environments. Global perspectives, ideas, and connections benefit everyone.  

At Intead we need only look up from our own desks to see the positive impact of multinational teams (and to our case studies for bottom-line proof of results). We expect many of you are fortunate enough to work in similar environments. We are all better for it as individuals. Our work product is stronger as well.  

The Biden Administration offered a bit of good news for international students earlier this year when they issued guidance making it easier for foreign graduates of American academic institutions to get work authorization. But it’s a small gesture that will likely have minimal impact. Still, we welcome the forward motion. 

Read on for ways your institution can improve career connections for your students... 

Between NAFSA, GMAC, EdUSA Forum, and keeping up with our client deliverables, our Q3 dance cards were full. And we are grateful. Connecting with colleagues like you in person always gives us a boost. We had a lot of press coverage about our very cool market research as well.

Were you able to follow all that? 

If you were similarly occupied (maybe US election news had you distracted?), you may have missed a Recruiting Intelligence post or two. No problem. We’ve got you covered. In this quarterly wrap-up post, find quick links to our action-orient tips on: 

• How and when to use LinkedIn for student recruitment 
• Using English Language Programs’ enrollment indicators 
• Making the most of your international recruiting trips 
• Insights into Sub-Saharan Africa 
• Key takeaways from our conference presentations: NAFSA, GMAC, and EdUSA Forum 
• And more! 

Opportunities to Meet the Intead Team  
- NAFSA Region XI, Hartford, CT, Oct. 27-29, 2024
- PIE Live North America, Boston, MA, Nov. 19-20, 2024
- AIRC, Seattle-Bellevue, WA, Dec. 4-7 -- including our pre-conference global marketing workshop. A full day of Intead global intel (lunch included ; -). Details here. 

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Access 825+ articles, slide decks, reports with relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting.  Check it out.

Ready to catch up on Q3 news? Read on… 

English language programs (ELP) are a barometer for future enrollment trends. Canaries in the coal mine if you will. When participation is strong, your upcoming application season will likely also be strong. On the other hand, a drop in participation can foreshadow a similar fate for near-term enrollment. (source: see pandemic) 

Understanding the health of this academic niche makes a lot of sense, especially for those tasked with program development or international student recruitment, which is why we so appreciate the efforts of EnglishUSA and their partners BONARD and Pearson Test of English, for their work on the recently published Annual Report on English Language Programs in the USA 2023. The report offers insights helpful to edu institutions across the board. And in this, their second annual report, they offer good news: ELP enrollment is up.

A special thanks to Cheryl Delk-Le Good for bringing this report to our community.

The analysis of the canaries gives us the signposts we all want. The countries where ELP numbers are up give us perspective on where it might make sense to focus our international student recruitment investments.

Our next opportunity to meet!   
NAFSA Region XI, Hartford, CT, Oct 27-29. The Intead team will be there presenting on Admission Process Analysis, Marketing Data Analytics, and Marketing Study Abroad Programs with university partners from our New England region friends from Quinnipiac, Johnson and Wales, Clark, and Emerson. Practical strategies and creative tactics to hit your enrollment targets.  Hope to see you there! 

PIE Live North America, Boston, MA, Nov 19-20. We will be talking about our analysis of career success data and how institutions can use that data to improve recruitment initiatives around the world. Our powerhouse co-presenters: Kerry Salerno, Chief Marketing Officer, Babson College and Andrew Chen, CEO, F1 Hire.

Bookmark this: Intead’s Resource Center 
Take your challenge of the day and plop it into our search bar. With 800+ publications and our 15 years of weekly blogging, you will find relevant content on any topic important to enrollment management and student recruiting. Check it out.

According to the EnglishUSA report, the global English language teaching sector continues to recover and is now 77% of its 2019 student numbers, signaling a positive trend in overall postsecondary enrollment. In the US, the recovery rate was 69% – lower, but still positive.   

Compare this to US institutions as a whole. While all enrollment (domestic + international) is still down 800,000 students from 2019 numbers per the National Student Clearinghouse, solid gains have been made to rebuild enrollment. The latest IIE data on international students in the US (2022/23) indicates that numbers have reached 98% of the 2019/20 levels.  

On a global scale, the EnglishUSA report shows 1.1 million students in 2023 took an English language course in one of eight major destinations – Australia, Canada, Ireland, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, and US.  Among these, the US was the third most popular country, hosting 13% of the students, falling in line behind the UK and Australia. And that 13% added up to over $1.7 billion in direct economic impact to the US economy. Education is a solid export for the US. 

These numbers just scratch the surface of the nuanced report, which offers perspective on preferred course types, recruitment channels, visa challenges, more on the economic impact of ELP students, and other valuable insights.  

With students back on campus, we know you’re busy. So, today a quick overview of the stats we found particularly interesting as global marketers. Read on… 

If you’re on the fence about WhatsApp, know this: Meta’s goal is to make WhatsApp a household name, whether it is to shop, chat, or stay on top of news and events. That from a recent New York Times article. In it, Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp confirms what we are already seeing, that the conversation has moved from ‘WhatsApp is the app I use outside the US when I travel,’ to something much more mainstream in the US. Below, we get detailed and actionable about what this means to you.

Word from Apptopia confirms as much. Its numbers show WhatsApp’s daily active users grew by 9% in the US last year, with 50% of these users chatting daily on the app, 78% weekly. Aside from Meta’s interest in cementing this app as the singular messaging tool among consumers worldwide, pundits point to a variety of reasons for the uptick in the US – the preference for messaging versus emailing, the preference for closed-group messaging rather than social media blasts, the increase in post-pandemic international travel, and the app’s ease of use for business communication just to name a few. 

Events you won’t want to miss:

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. Intead will be presenting on student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations at: 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 2024
• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024
  
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com)

Those who read last week’s post know how we feel. (Get to it!). It just makes so much sense for universities to have a Business WhatsApp account, especially those who work with international students. And now, we believe, for domestic markets, too. Check out our handy, quick-hit, 11-step check list.

Just like last week, this post is the kind of thing you might want to share with your enrollment team and prompt a discussion at the next team meeting. How would you adapt our recommendations to your particular situation (CRM, staff structure, enrollment pipeline, etc.)?

If you are going to be using WhatsApp, we strongly recommend you puppeteer these communications from a WhatsApp Business account. We got into the meat and potatoes of setting these accounts up last week. Now, let’s get to dessert, aka best use practices. Read on… 

What’s up with WhatsApp is a question we find ourselves answering a lot lately, especially when talking about student recruitment. And it is a bit more for international students than domestic, though this blog is useful intel for both. As a teaser, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on WhatsApp. Yes, that was 100 billion per day! We have more eye popping stats below. 

An important messaging tool because it works across countries, many institutions have been using personal WhatsApp accounts that are attached to a single phone number. That works, but as far as standard operating procedures go, that’s a bit flimsy.  

WhatsApp, a Meta company for 10 years now, has an answer called WhatsApp Business. That too has been around awhile (WhatsApp Business launched in 2018), but it’s just been a bit cumbersome for many overly busy international offices to onboard. And many of their domestic student recruitment counterparts have taken a why-bother approach. 

Our take: it’s time to bite the bullet – it’s easier than you think – and set up a WhatsApp Business account that can be managed from a desktop (see our quick hit 11-step process). 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.   

Events you won’t want to miss:

Let’s talk international student enrollment at the upcoming AIRC Spring Symposium on April 30. Intead will be presenting on student recruitment marketing budgets – we've got some great new insights to share. Register today!

The Intead team is gearing up for some amazing presentations at: 

• ICEF North America in Niagara, Canada, May 1-3, 2024
• NAFSA 2024 Annual Conference and Expo in New Orleans, May 28-31, 2024
  
• GMAC 2024 Annual Conference in New Orleans, June 19-21, 2024

Let us know if you’ll share a cup of coffee and a conversation about all things global and digital (info@intead.com) 

This is exactly the kind of stuff so many of you read our blog for, right? What is the time investment? What is the upside? How do I set my enrollment management systems up for success?   

So, let’s get right to it. Read on to learn why WhatsApp is proving to be a good tool for many student recruiters right now – international and domestic – and how to go about setting up your business account. We’ll make it easy for you, as always. And yes, this is one of those posts you’ll want to share with your team (link at bottom) and discuss in the next team meeting. 

As I headed to Phoenix for the AIRC 2023 conference, I wondered if the window had already closed for education institutions just now considering starting up with commission-based agents as an international student recruitment channel. Happy to tell you, that window has not closed at all.  

Yet, there is a lot to consider for those institutions just starting, and those having been at it for years. 

With the largest AIRC conference to-date (480 attendees), more than 200 first timers attended. Clearly there is demand to learn more about how effective university-agent partnerships work. And having been part of the AIRC community for 14 of their 15-year history, I can tell you that AIRC is one of the best places to learn about international student enrollment growth. 

From sample contracts to efficient agent engagement policies and practices, AIRC’s documentation and counsel are outstanding. This year, 7 members of the Intead team traveled to Phoenix to attend, in part because the learning opportunities and global connections at this conference are among the best in the industry. The other part was the opportunity to share our own expertise with the attendees at our full-day Global Marketing Workshop. That was a hoot. The Intead team just loves this stuff. 

We’ll be at AIEA in DC in about 6 weeks and participating in 3 great presentations: 

• AI for enrollment management  
• Entrepreneurial leadership in bureaucratic environments 
• A discussion around International Student Points of Entry and a new international student-focused publication to be released later in 2024 
  

And of course, we will be presenting at NAFSA in New Orleans in late May. If you’d like to schedule time to chat over coffee instead of over Zoom, please be in touch (info@intead.com). 

At AIRC 2023, we gave our full-day Global Marketing Workshop with half a day devoted to an interactive lecture on the fundamentals of the strategy that drives a university’s tactical execution. After lunch, we dove into 1:1 consulting with participants to address the group’s self-identified greatest needs.  

It was fascinating to see how our workshop attendees debated and decided amongst themselves what the second half topics should be. Here’s where we ended up: 

• I need a marketing budget, what do I do to get it approved? 
• I have a marketing budget. Now what? 
• Identifying and filling resource gaps 
• Processes for nurturing and converting leads 
• Creating authentic and powerful recruitment content 

Do these topics resonate for you? Be in touch and we can share what we know and how we have helped institutions like yours succeed.  

During the AIRC conference, Intead’s Sr. Digital Marketing Manager Iliana Joaquin joined Dr. David DiMaria, SIO at UMBC, for a practical discussion about how AI and ChatGPT are being used today in enrollment management and what we can realistically expect in the next year as AI-driven tools evolve. Short answer – it ain’t there yet, but it very likely will be in the next couple of years. So much more to talk about on this topic. There are definitely some gains that can be made in some areas, but the hype from the vendors is creating so much noise. Very frustrating.

Later at the conference, I ran a session with Vanessa Andrade about staffing challenges that so many institutions are facing today. The discussion about what skills and tasks to hire for and what to outsource was dynamic with so many additions from the folks in the room. This is what we absolutely love about the AIRC conference.

We are making these insightful presentations available to blog subscribers for free. Download them here.

Below we summarize 3 key take-aways from the conference. Please read on… 

From the annual CIEE conference in Paris to Pie Live in Boston then AIRC in Phoenix and a super quick turnaround to ICEF in Miami, Q4 literally flew by. You, too? We wouldn’t change a thing, of course. It’s hard to replace the simple act of togetherness. It’s how ideas come to life. Cliché? Fine. But it’s so true. 

Sharing our research and student recruitment campaign results with our community always feels great. We’re here to make you more effective (and have interesting insights to share at your team meetings).  

A few key Q4 takeaways we will absolutely be bringing into the new year: 

• The global competition for international students is stronger by the day, and institutions need to be increasingly smarter in their approach to international education, including recruitment. Can you be? (hint: it has to do with the skill sets you access to do the work) 
• China and India are hot topics as always, especially India’s dramatic rising numbers of incoming graduate (and undergraduate) students.  
• Enrollment departments are eager to leverage AI. The question is: how? And, is it ready for us? 
• More must be done to support student mental health. So much more. 
• And how about the new IIE Open Doors report?! Lagging data that points toward the future. 
  

Just a few notes we’re thinking about. Clearly there’s no lack of issues for our industry to address. So, if in the midst of this really busy few months you didn’t have time to read all of our posts, we understand. That’s why we’ve compiled this quarterly at-a-glance post. It covers all our news from how to navigate TikTok’s ad platform to what’s going on with higher ed in India and so much in between that you and your team won’t want to miss.Read on…