Recruiting Intelligence

India is the second largest source country for students who are looking to study abroad (China tops the list).   However, the complexion of the study abroad market in India has changed a lot. Ten years ago, the USA and UK were the top destinations, but now we see Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and other non-traditional destinations like The Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, China and Taiwan all actively wooing Indian students.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it was like before I could Google everything I ever wanted to know. It's hard to believe that such a time existed considering our reliance on internet searches. I Google restaurants, maps, colleagues, stores, toys for my children. You name it, I've Googled it. And you can be sure if I'm traveling I conduct a series of Google searches. If I'm heading out of the country Google is my best resource for information. Google images takes it to the next level with pages of images to accompany any search I can imagine. 

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

#53. Social media

You are reading an excerpt from our e-book "88 Ways to Recruit International Students" (Click here to read the entire book)

At our core we at Intead are a technology company dedicated to helping universities harness digital solutions for their recruitment and retention needs. Let’s be honest here, we love technology. We have been digital marketers for well over a decade now. And we’d love to encourage our readers (and clients) to better utilize options available today. Digital media offers powerful tools for optimizing your marketing over time based on trackable user behavior. Digital marketers can test and modify their messages to appeal to the right student and their parents. Tracking web traffic from the first unrecognized visit by a prospective student to the final step of enrollment can lead to cost reductions, efficiency gains and result in yield improvements.

What do I mean by "rudimentary?" Maybe I should have stated that U.S. domestic student recruitment has become more and more sophisticated over the past few years. This trend will accelerate with increased competition among schools across larger territories, more entries into hybrid and online brands that lend themselves to larger territories, and broader marketing campaigns. 

I noticed in discussions with admissions officers their surprise that higher education companies own and use multiple brands.  These companies also offer a variety of services.  Because of my previous professional life of investment and Merger & Acquisition work, I tend to dig into the structure and origin of companies.  Hence, we launched a small summer project with our interns to research ownership of a few higher visibility and acquisitive companies.  In subsequent blogs we will cover brands and services owned by various companies.  Our selection will be completely subjective and not scientific.  If we miss an interesting company, please let us know.   

We are continuing to work on our summer research project. Here is one of the companies we researched for you. To read the introduction to this project, click here:_http://bit.ly/whoownswhom

Introduction: