June 21, 2012

International Recruitment 101: Summer break is the perfect time to identify your academic champions

Jun. 21, 2012 at 09:53 AM | By Marlysa Connolly | Comment Count

In today’s economic environment, schools should look for ways to reduce spending while creating new revenue streams. With little activity going on in the international recruitment community, summer break is the perfect time to identify academic champions to help accomplish these initiatives.

Identify academic programs willing to support international recruitment efforts as academic champions:

Tough questions need to be considered before identifying academic champions:

Will this program attract applications?
Can the advising staff manage new growth?
Is there a point person within the program to work with?
Are faculty engaged in international projects?

To take advantage of this growing interest in niche academic programs, recruiters should provide marketing materials to students, high school counselors, Education USA offices, foreign universities and foreign government representatives. At the very best, recruiters should seek-out and engage with these parties via recruitment trips.

Opportunities for academic partnership, summer programs, study abroad exchanges, all exist in the global education marketplace. These activities increase brand awareness, make recruitment easier, facilitate student/faculty exchange, enrich academic research through collaboration and create revenue through training and grants.

Once a recruiter identifies their academic champions, they should meet with them before and after a recruitment trip to brief and debrief on opportunities present for all. In doing so, this system will reduce costs, increase brand awareness, identify revenue opportunities and motivate other academic units to consider championing for international recruitment. All in all, leading to greater investment in support of international activities.