By Heather Zimar, AACRAO Managing Editor, Journals & Publications
At Clark University, the directors of recruitment, marketing, and admissions have been working together over the last year to optimize their partnership, specifically between recruitment and admissions.
Alyssa Orlando, Director of Graduate Admissions, and Amy Daly Gardner, Associate Dean, Director of Graduate Admissions, shared with attendees at the 2023 AACRAO SEM Conference the steps they took to identify hand-off points from student recruitment to the admissions team.
Gardner and Orlando explained that historically there had been a divide between recruitment and admissions teams at the campus; recruiters were seen as staff who travel and meet with students and external partners, while admissions team members were seen as the “boots on the ground” staff who process applications and maintain system operations. “This can cause friction between individual employees and, ultimately, decrease divisions’ morale,” said Gardner. “It’s an “us” vs. “them” mentality.”
Gardner said she made it her goal to break down that division, and Orlando had a similar perspective when she came to the university.
Now, we’re all working toward a common goal, Garner said.
They shared four key steps for fostering their collaboration:
- Partnerships. This included working with dual degree programs at the graduate level as well as internal partners, ensuring that both recruitment and admissions voices were at the table.
- Process. This focused on establishing a student- and customer-centric admissions process, including: reframing the way staff were thinking about admissions policies and procedures; moving some responsibilities from recruiting to the admissions team, and vice versa; and creating some shared work of which everyone takes ownership.
- Communication. For both internal and external communications, Daly and Orlando said they were purposeful in defining the means of communication to improve overall team morale and relationships. For internal communications, this included team chats, channels, and limited use of email except for documenting decision-making. For external communications, (student services, agencies, vendors), this included documenting everything via email and looping in marketing, recruitment, and admissions when beginning and conversation with a new partner.
- Technology. A great CRM makes everything a little better, Orlando said.
We want to do what’s best for the students, she said. We feel this collaborative situation is what’s best for the students.