Graduate Student Recruitment

How can you improve Graduate Student Recruitment?

You can learn about outreach and marketing strategies from qualitative and quantitative studies and expert insights. Some emerging strategies like e‐marketing and social media management are growing fast, representing more than 30 % of recruitment expenses in 2016.

Don’t fear it : this is sales, but is also being purchased

Attracting international graduate students requires two new natures : being pull-mode and being digital.

Digital marketing requires in-bound marketing. Inbound marketing requires interesting content. The good news is : perfect content is at your doorstep. Your current international students produce it. Interview them before they come, during their study abroad stay, and after their experience. Publish this content on your branded medias : Facebook an Instagram page, Youtube page, local social networks (like QQ, We chat…), webpage, brochures, newsletters and make sure graduate schools see it by tagging them.

What are the main graduate student recruitment actions?

There are so many possible actions to increase your graduate student recruitment:

• Design clearer web pages to enhance international student interest, and better : in their language
• Send invitations to open house and set-up campus visit days to generate inquiries
• Advertise on scholarships for students in financial need
• Follow-up by email or messenging apps with candidates having incomplete applications
• Contact admitted students from faculty
• Organize campus visits for admitted students
• Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure appearing in search results, remarketing of course.

Talking SEO and community branding

Do you insert lists of graduate schools in your digital strategy to target the right institution? Do you follow them on twitter? Do you like their post? Do you retweet them?

Do you follow them on LinkedIn? Have you set-up back-links and interviews of alumni on your website?

Did you look at what international students type on search queries? Did you adapt your content to it. Do your programs talk about what they want to know, do you anticipate their questions?

The power of texting approach

HigherEdMe uses very short sentences at the beginning of the process with candidates. It is not too serious, but we grab enough information to make sure that the candidate will go further in the process and that this “lead” is promising and serious. Nobody wants to loose time.