Recruiting Intelligence

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.

LinkedIn dominates online professional relationship building. LinkedIn creates and retains connections, provides transparency into professional backgrounds and accomplishments.  Professional recruiting is heavily influenced by LinkedIn.  An now LinkedIn is starting to build a direct connection to universities, alumni and even university rankings.  What does that mean for your activities as university administrators, admission officers and alumni offices?

What happens when a prospective international student uses Facebook and Twitter to signify her interest in, and hopefully to learn more about, various institutions in the English speaking world? We, at Intead, recently conducted another mystery shopper experiment with institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As has happened in previous mystery shopper experiments, we were not surprised, yet still disappointed by the dismal rate of response by institutions in these countries. One country proved exceptional in their universities’ ability to respond quickly and effectively. You might be surprised to learn the big winner of this experiment.

In our ongoing effort to share the latest in social media marketing we begin this two part series on WeChat. We are eager to share this exciting Chinese social media platform that is quickly becoming popular throughout the world. And yes, you can create posts in Chinese and English.

Graeme Menzies, Director of Marketing Communications & Social Media at The University of British Columbia, joins Michael Waxman-Lenz, Intead CEO and co-founder, to share his vast knowledge of marketing and social media in the higher education realm. Higher education professionals seeking to improve their marketing, communications and social media strategies will gain a great deal of insight through Mr. Menzies discussion.

If you haven’t started utilizing gamification for the purposes of attracting, recruiting and enrolling students both domestically and internationally, you should. University websites toting lists of information and a couple pictures won’t cut it in the competitive market that is international recruitment today. Nowadays, in a world where young adults are almost obsessively focused with devices—and the app games available on them—you need to cater to those interests in order to be noticed.

We all know the cost and logistical challenges of meeting international students face-to-face can be prohibitive. We also understand their value: Personal meetings are compelling and can convince students to enroll. So how can you create personal and influential interactions with potential students, even from far away? 

The season of new ranking releases will be upon us again soon. Admission departments worry that their school's U.S. News & World Report ranking will be lowered and student, faculty, and alumni will let their displeasure be known. 

How cutting edge is your institution's career services office? When key reports are published is the data considered for future planning? What is YOUR career services department doing with the Glassdoor report regarding employers hiring by sector?

International travel and attending fairs is an important recruitment channel and is a major investment for many universities.  Last week, we shared data with you on how lead generation for prospective students is affected by the quality of the services provided by fair providers in our blog post: Will Your Student Fair Provider Deliver Value This Recruiting Season?