Secrets to Online Recruiting Success

Ok, here I am at the Stamats Integrated Marketing Conference:Technology, Collaboration, Results after not having blogged here almost since my last Stamats conference in Chicago last July.

Sorry about that. I just feel like I have little to say in this world where there are so many universities doing so many cool things ... We have some good ideas that hopefully we'll be able to start implementing, but we have some catching up to do, to say the least.

Secrets to Online Recruiting Success
Paul Zastrow
Brenda Harms

Paul took the lead with Brenda chiming in until we got to the Adult Recruiting portion of the session, where she took the floor on her area of expertise. This was almost too much information for a single two-hour presentation. They did a great job though and finished on almost a breathless, "There! we got through it all!" note at 3:00. No other sessions followed, however, so there was plenty of time for questions and answers.

"Visiting the college's website" is ranked by 43% of prospective students as "very helpful" in their college searches. This puts the website as #5 among the top information sources - behind the #4 financial aid brochure, #3 talking with an admissions representative, #2 the catalog and, always #1, the campus visit.

I've noted this before, but it bears repeating in the face of that stat: Fully 25% of applications come from students we never knew about until they applied. Being positioned to serve these "stealth applicants" makes it more important than ever that the website is everything it needs to be.

(Note: That "financial aid brochure" is something we should look at as well - is it complete and easy to understand? Could we enhance it in any way?)

Further, according to the latest TeensTALK survey (2006, Statmats), a full 84% of teens say that the web is one of the most important tools in their college search. What I'm blogging here is my biggest takeaway from this presentation.

Five components of online college recruiting

1. Website

• Be easy to navigate
• Be relevant
• Be clear – it's all about scanning. Various entry points.
• Be current – use CMS for quick easy updates
• Make quality content available- make sure it’s worth it. Delivers the experience. Interesting, relevant
• Find a singular voice – esp. in top three tiers. Should be written by one person or small group
• Refresh regularly - We are going to push this with our next redesign
• Be interactive – ex.: tuition calculator
  

2. Push technologies

• Email- allow prospects to email current students in addition to admissions reps, etc. They consider email to be an appropriate medium to use with older people or for sending complex messages.
• IM – 72% would IM somebody if they could. 21%have IM’d a recruiter or student worker. But can you do it on their time? If not, don't try it.
• Text – interesting – put this at the bottom of the list for recruiting
  

3. Search engine marketing

• 85% of traffic is originated in a search What are they searching for? Desired major/career, location attributes, college information sites, type of school, ranking
• Optimize – two kinds of search: organic and paid. 85%of users click on unpaid results. Must be in positions 7-10 in organic listings to be clicked on.
• Determine keywords for a page – program or brand relevant. 5-7% of words in text should be keywords. Copy, headlines, page title, metadata. Need to keep on top of this though - search algorithms are constantly changing. This is a continuous job - my best source (VP of IT) says that these days metadata isn't what it once was as a determiner of where your site will fall in organic search.
• Pay per click – Best suited for different or iconic programs. Less effective than organic search over time. Proprietary keywords like MBA can be cost prohibitive. People who respond to pay per click are looking for immediate response. If you can’t get back to people in 24 hours, don’tbother. MUST track this and prove ROI. We need to take a fresh look at this - it may be much more cost effective for us to target a few choice programs with AdWords.
  

4. Web 2.0

• It’s the way millenials view the web. Radical shift in marketing.
• Participatory culture. Content creates community.
• 64% of teens are content creators.
• 700+ institutional Facebook pages have been created (as of Dec. 2007)
• 33% of colleges do admissions blogging. Fuhrman University has made a serious investment in blogging. Pay their students, give video cameras to them for their posts. Caveat - If you are going to engage in these efforts, you MUST be authentic. No marketing speak. Millenials see through all that.
• 73% of teems upload photos. More people want to see photos than video. DU has a Flickr page, here. How about a photo contest? GVSU does this to get photos for the front page of their site.
• And how about video? YouTube's market share is 74 million viewers (Dec. 2007). See Roanoke College's YouTube page (check it out - it is fun!) Can we brand our YouTube page?
• On the flip side - Universities are beginning to search web 2.0 (Facebook pages, etc.) to research potential students.
• Con – You will have to cede your brand control somewhat to students and users.
  

5. Third party sites

• We don’t always contol these. But we need to know what others are saying. People are looking for the ‘real’ story by searching blogs, other sites, etc. Examples: The Princeton Review, College Confidential. Monitor this stuff, but you can’t impact it directly.