Higher education institutions are always working to attract students, faculty, and staff.
On one side, admissions teams work hard to recruit and admit students to study at the institution. In another corner of campus, human resources teams are working to source, recruit, and hire faculty and staff to teach and support the students. Admissions and hiring teams may not be connected in the day-to-day, but their roles are deeply connected. Read on below to learn how HR teams can take a page out the admissions book to attract best-fit candidates.
Marketing and branding
Admissions teams are masters of marketing and branding. They work hard to distinguish your institution from others of similar size and offerings, and do an amazing job at highlighting the things that really make your campus unique. Even though your HR team should work to develop a unique employer brand that highlights the things staff and faculty are interested, you can still take advantage of what the admissions team produces.
Robin Borough, Director of Talent Acquisition at Chapman University, noted in a recent panel at PeopleConnect Live: “Universities have the best marketing I’ve ever seen, but there’s five brick walls and a moat with alligators around the marketing team. Working with them becomes onerous because we’re busy and shorthanded, but if we take advantage of the things that marketing has already written, we can put that in the P.S. of our automated responses to candidates as a “did you know.” There’s so much your university is already publishing. If you can get ownership of just one page where you can curate things that are already approved as public marketing materials, that’s a great start.” Hear more from Robin by visiting the PeopleConnect Live on-demand portal!
Advocates and outreach
Admissions teams do a great deal of outreach to prospective students. They are advocates and marketers for the institution, and they often spend time at college fairs spreading the word about the school. Human resources teams can take a similar tactic.
“As a community college on a budget, we have made every employee a marketer. We educate our employees to know everything they possibly can about our college with a one-pager or an elevator pitch on the school, and that’s our brand. Then, we put all of them on the street and they become advocates for us as an employer,” says Carla Major, Chief Human Resources Officer at Delgado Community College. Become part of your local community, and send advocates to job fairs or other events to spread the word about your institution and solidify your employer brand.
Partnership
Ask your enrollment marketing team for tips! Work with them to develop materials that work for your team when they have time, share their social media posts, and set up brainstorm sessions. You all have the same mission – attract people who want to be at your school.