Effective strategies for university recruitment

University Recruitment

Figuring out new ways of recruiting college students can be a tough job to tackle for any admissions office. That’s why university recruitment is starting to get creative! In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about university recruitment and different strategies, best practices, and innovations to use in order to engage prospective students and increase enrollment at your school. Specifically, we’ll also cover some of these points below:

• College recruiting trends
• Student recruitment strategies
• How to recruit high school students for college with video
• Tips, best practices & best ways to recruit college students

Higher Education Recruitment Trends

Many recruiting trends nowadays are focused on the rise of virtual recruitment. Higher ed recruitment has changed drastically in the last few years and now utilizes many different types of mediums to communicate with prospective students and get them engaged. Because video is such a popular medium for young adults, it can be incredibly powerful and can oftentimes be the best and preferred platform to communicate with students. University enrollment rates are also on the decline and students are looking to jumping right into the workforce after high school. Making it that much more important for admissions offices to step up their recruiting game.

Most student recruitment ideas and college recruiting ideas all revolve around using new types of technology to communicate with prospective students. Students are more attracted to campuses and colleges that acknowledge changes in the technological environment and are drawn to efforts that are more ‘tech-savvy. Using video in your recruitment outreach and strategies can be a huge game-changer! Keep reading to find out how you can incorporate video into your recruitment efforts!

College Recruitment Strategies

The best student recruitment strategies will vary for each school depending on its size, location, specialties, acceptance rate, etc… However, this industry is highly competitive, which is why it is so important to stand out amongst other schools and incorporate innovative college recruitment strategies. A great method to do this is through personalized videos. A personalized video is essentially a clip where you record yourself communicate a message as opposed to typing out a plain text email. These types of videos are created for individuals as opposed to large groups of people therefore they are highly personalized and can be very specific to the student.

Personalized videos are an effective aspect of campus sourcing strategies for a number of reasons. Personalized videos are significantly more engaging and can humanize every conversation had between students and administrators, making the student feel more recognized and appreciated. These types of videos are also convenient because you still get ‘face time’ with students with the convenience of an email. Personalized videos are a great tool to use for virtual recruiting efforts and also make a great marketing tactic because students love to share these types of videos. An example of higher ed student recruitment that utilized videos in their admissions efforts is Depauw in which a student was more likely to respond to an email within an hour and watched the personalized video 25 times, sharing it with friends and family as well.

How to Recruit Undergraduate Students with Video

Even though using personalized videos is very different from the traditional marketing content used in recruitment in colleges, you can use videos throughout the entire process of student recruitment. Personalized videos are 1:1 and are therefore recorded for one specific individual or small groups of people, but in some instances can still be used for a more general audience. In terms of logistics, an admissions counselor or someone from the admissions team would be the one to record a short personalized video for the student and send it off to the students. The purpose of the actual video will determine what message is communicated throughout it, but typically, these videos are short and to the point. Essentially, you are communicating the same message you would send in an email but with the opportunity to deliver it ‘in person’. Some common use cases for how to recruit students using videos include:

• Answering questions and follow-ups from students
• Invitations to upcoming events
• Reminders about deadlines or campus visits
• Sharing news and updates on the status of an application
• Introducing prospective students to the student body, the faculty, and the staff
• Virtual tours and showing off part of the campus that specifically interest the student (i.e. sports facilities, certain academic buildings, dorms, or dining)

With Covideo, sending a personalized video is super easy! Here, we can show you how to recruit college students and how universities recruit students using video. Covideo can help you record, send, and track your personalized videos. Once you’ve recorded your video, choose whether you want to send your video via email or text. When you send your message via email, your video thumbnail will embed into the body of the email, so when the student opens your email, they will be greeted with a smiling and waving face. Once they click on the video, they will be redirected to a branded video landing page accompanied by custom CTA buttons. These CTA buttons are great for attaching a link to an application, forms, or anything else you may want to include. You will also be able to see data and analytics for your video, so you’ll know exactly who watched it, when and how many times it was replayed, as well as if any CTA buttons were clicked.

University Student Recruitment Best Practices

College recruiting best practices are hard to come by, which is why we made a list of our favorite tips and tricks for recording videos for the purpose of college campus recruitment.

• Short videos – To keep the attention of the viewer, try to keep your videos short and to the point and preferably under one minute.
• Remain authentic – It’s important to be yourself when recording so that your personality can shine through the video!
• Personalize your message – Make sure to actually say the student’s name and reference something specific to them in your video. For example, their school, interests, or any specific answers to their questions.
• Aesthetic – Make sure your video is visually pleasing to look at. This may mean adjusting your lighting, angles, and background to capture a certain aesthetic.
• Act casual and conversational – You should also make sure to talk how you would in person, if you mess up, just keep going with your video. It doesn’t need to be perfect!
• Use your computer or desktop – Recording personalized videos don’t need to be expensive and don’t require fancy equipment, just use your computer!

We’ve also included a campus recruitment example video to see how colleges and universities are using this throughout their admissions process.

Enhance Your University Recruitment Today

If you’re still not convinced, check out our higher-ed page to see how other universities like Miami, Michigan State, and Texas Tech are using video throughout their college recruitment process. We encourage everyone to request a demo to speak to a higher-ed expert who will walk you through our video messaging platform and help strategize a plan for your college’s higher education recruitment! With Covideo, you can use video recording software free of charge with all of our standard features to see what it’s all about. So if you prefer to learn more on your own, Start a free trialf to start incorporating videos into your campus recruitment today; no credit card required! Learn more about our demo now!