Recruiting Intelligence

If you are a regular reader of this blog you might have noticed how I fondly reminisce about my experience as an admission counselor. I spent three years working at my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. This was my first real job so the experience was pivotal in shaping me as a budding professional. I can appreciate firsthand how the last few months have been an utter whirlwind for admission counselors. From a winter spent in the depths of file reading to a spring spent trying to enroll all of the admitted students, there has been little time to breathe, let alone spend time reading this blog. So today I want to point out some blog posts you might have missed over the last few months.

Here at Intead we don't spend a lot of time tooting our own horn. We're so busy implementing client projects while analyzing trends in international higher education recruiting and marketing, digital marketing and social media, there's little time for patting ourselves on the back. Let alone shouting our succeses from the rafters.  

Your work, like ours, is important stuff. And all that stuff is valued by the folks we reach, our target audiences: the students, researchers, and other industry professionals who benefit from what our organizations do. These are our customers.

So when good customer feedback happens, we have the opportunity to use it as objective justification for the value of our work. Testimonials represent authentic, reliable and sharable content to let our customers hear the message: "Hey, these guys met my needs; exceeded my expectations."

We'd like to proudly introduce a new content source for you-- Intead Index-- a set of indices that provides you with all of the information you need to make informed decisions. We will publish the lists regularly on the blog over the next few months.We will be publishing a compilation of these lists on a yearly basis. While we'd like to think that our research is comprehensive, we know that there might be service providers we inadvertently overlooked. That's where you, our loyal readers, come into the picture.  We welcome your comments and additions to the lists. Feel free to use the provided link to share your feedback. 

As institutions attempt to distinguish themselves from competitors, university marketers and recruiters seek additional means of highlighting institutional strengths. One of the previously overlooked, yet easily highlightable, assets is post-graduation career placement. As we've mentioned in the past on this blog, we strongly encourage our clients and colleagues to highlight post-graduation employment. Students and especially parents are increasingly interested in learning about how your graduates fare in the job market. Though international students have a unique set of circumstances regarding post-graduation employment, understanding the career prospects of graduates is frequently listed as an important factor for higher education selection.

Peanut butter and jelly. Batman and Robin. Abbott and Costello. And the most recent dynamic duo: teenager and internet. Since the iPhone became a regular at the family dinner table, the landscape of teenage life has changed—including how they search for, and ultimately choose, an institution of higher education.

You already know this, and so do today’s wide range of digital lead generation services. These digital services can provide a more student-driven, personal search process that suits today’s independent and tech-savvy teens—a far leap from the mass mailings (or even e-mailings) from student search service contact lists. See our recent blog-- Digital Direct Marketing to International Students: Are You on Target? Several of these services even offer international expertise. Want to know where to start? Here are some key considerations.

In a world of fast-paced activity and seemengly never ending responsibilities, it isn't always easy to find the time to listen. It's important to take a break from charting progress, developing novel programs and tools, and talking through brochures, websites, social media and face-to-face. Listening is critical. With that in mind we recently conducted a focus group with international students, many of whom are college freshmen, to take the time to listen to what was important to them in the recruitment process. We learned four key takeaway messages which are outlined below.

International travel tours and college fair attendance are two of the biggest expense items in most international admissions departments that utilize this recruiting channel for their international student enrollment.  We have developed a list of criteria for you on how to select vendors for these trips.

In late 2013 we unveiled STOURY, a unique app designed to tell your university's story anywhere, in any language. STOURY allows you to deliver dynamic, vibrant and informative conversations.

We've been in the fields of higher education, international student recruitment and digital marketing for quite a while and we've found there is ONE QUESTION EVERYONE ASKS.

This year, we have been asked to recruit 10% more international students to internationalize our campus and to raise the necessary tuition revenue. Yes, we understand the financial pressures that we are under as a college and greater international student enrollment can be part of our long-term viability as we have been tracking a trend of weaker demographics in our typical domestic recruitment region. In talking to prospective domestic students and their parents, I know the pressure our higher tuition bills put on families.

I love what we accomplish as a college. We may not belong to the elite group of colleges, but I know we do change lives. More precisely, our professors, academic and other advisors, counselors, and fellow students change lives.