Recruitment. The easiest job on campus.
Everyone tells you how to do it and no two pieces of advice seem to be the same. On many campuses the recruitment staff is young--barely out of college themselves--and asked to assume the awesome responsibility of representing the college in the marketplace, making sales and generating the raw talent and net revenue needed to keep the lights on, compensate the faculty, and keep the lawns mowed.
Not even veteran recruiters may understand the complexities and challenges of the profession today. Admission recruiters who entered the industry anytime after 1985 operated during a period of sustained growth in the number of high school graduates, increases in the percentage of those graduates enrolling in college and family incomes that were, on average, on a steady path toward higher incomes and greater net worth. But somewhere around 2008 or 2009, things changed dramatically. Some areas experienced a downturn in high school graduation numbers, and the overall number of high school graduates nationwide leveled off. We were hit with a prolonged recession and the actual number of new freshmen in American colleges started to decline. As a result, interstate and inter-regional competition for talented students grew geometrically.
Recruiters: Do more with less
The way we recruit students changed at least as fast as the marketplace. Technology revolutionized how we engage and persuade prospective students. The number of communication channels exploded: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, streaming video, direct marketing and the old standbys including print, television and radio. And the audience changed. Prospective students started applying to more colleges swelling applicant pools and driving down yield nationwide. Parents started to exert influence in the college choice process at the eleventh hour by focusing on net cost and making sophisticated value judgments in conjunction with their sons and daughters.
The economic condition forced colleges to focus on where they expended their limited resources. Recruitment activities were not immune to the budget-cutting ax. Recruiters are being asked to produce more with less and to do so with less institutional financial aid.
How can today's recruiter build and deliver a recruitment program that meets all of the needs of the institution?
That is the real question. The answer lies in developing a thorough understanding of the decision process, using just enough resources to persuade the student to enroll and as little aid as possible to make enrollment financially feasible. It is a difficult assignment.
"The Art & Science of Student Recruitment," a preconference workshop at this year's AACRAO SEM Conference, provides an opportunity to step back and build a foundation for a solid recruitment program by examining successful strategies and tactics. The goal is to develop a recruitment framework that is appropriate and useful for your institution.
To find out more about the meeting, which will be held Nov. 1-4, 2015, in Hollywood, FL, and to register, visit the conference website.