Making a difference in your recruitment work

I was on a campus recently and we were exploring new visit formats. We outlined everything a family would experience from the moment they arrived on campus until the conclusion of the program. A few weeks later, this institution executed the visit program successfully. The turnout was a bit lower than anticipated, but we decided it was a good enough event that, with some tweaking, it might become a mainstay. We also decided the visit program wasn’t offered at the right time, so we agreed to move it to earlier in the academic year. How do we ensure this program, with our adjustments, will continue for the fall season?

Our 2011 Marketing and Student Recruitment Practices at Four-Year and Two-Year Institutions report indicates that many campuses have an annual recruitment plan. Among the survey participants, 83.7 percent from four-year privates, 81.5 percent from four-year publics, and 70.5 percent from two-year public institutions indicated they had an annual plan. However, when asked if their plans were of “good or excellent quality,” the percentages drop: 54.2 percent of private four-year, 56.9 percent of public four-year, and only 34.1 percent of two-year public institutions indicated they thought their plans were good or excellent.

I want your annual recruitment plan to move toward excellence. In fact, I am presenting a session at the Symposium on the Recruitment and Retention of Students of Color (April 18-20 in Denver) that will address this very topic. During that session, I’m going to examine the four main components of a good plan and work through the importance of each, but here’s a brief look at the four key areas.

• Define your current state of new student enrollment. You have to know where you’ve been to determine where you’re going. You have to be comfortable making data-driven decisions and using historical information to help drive your future.
• Establish clear and realistic goals. Having a plan for the future is a key element. How often does an admissions team start the year with a goal which, from the beginning, they know is unattainable? Are you looking at both new student recruitment and improvements in student retention to help achieve enrollment goals?
• Develop strategies to reach each goal. Each activity should help your team reach your overall objective. If it does not, you need to evaluate whether or not the activity is helpful. Areas across your operation, including territory management structure, your campus visit program, and organizational design, should be updated to reflect the individual needs and goals of your campus.
• Finally, put your strategies into a written action plan. Once you have identified your goals, it’s time to put the who, what, when, where, and why into place. The action plan is the enrollment team’s daily operations guide.

We will flesh out each of these items in greater depth during my session at the Symposium, and also discuss the visit program developed on this recent campus trip. I hope you can join us in Denver. However, if you’d like to discuss this further with me, please send me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to share ideas and strategies with you.