Recruitment Messaging: Focus!- Stamats Higher Education Marketing Blog

Jan 25th 10 Posted by Eric Sickler in Featured Articles, TeensTALK

Recruitment Messaging: Focus!

Findings from the 2009 FALL TeensTALK® study, administered in November to 500 college-bound high school students across the country, reveal some critically important strategic advice for recruiters who want to make sure they’re sending the right messages to prospective students at the right time.

Faithful TeensTALK® blog readers may recall that a few short months ago when the 2009 SUMMER TeensTALK® study was conducted, 18% of prospective undergrads told us the most influential consideration for them in making a final college choice was a school’s placement record—specifically the quality of jobs recent graduates were securing. On the heels of that consideration was “net cost after aid,” followed by “quality of faculty as teachers and mentors.”

2009 SUMMER TeensTALK® Findings: Share of Importance in FINAL Selection Decision

In the recently completed 2009 FALL study, however, when asked to identify the most influential factor in determining which schools to consider (at the beginning of their senior year), fully 20% of prospects cited “quality of my preferred major,” followed by 17% who identified the quality of the jobs landed by recent graduates from the college or university. Issues of “fit” and “net cost after aid” also scored at the top of the scale, but paled in comparison to the influence of perceived program quality.

2009 FALL TeensTALK® Findings: Share of Importance in Determining Which Colleges to Consider

There are at least two major takeaways from these findings:

This is clear evidence that in order to connect most effectively with prospective undergraduates, recruitment programs must alter their messaging strategies to accommodate the particular interests demonstrated by prospects at different points during the senior year. Interestingly, Stamats clients who surveyed their own prospects in tandem with the TeensTALK studies discovered their clientele didn’t necessarily demonstrate the same levels of factor importance as the national sample identified. So they’re adjusting their messaging strategy accordingly. [See information below about the newly available TeensTALK® Focus project.]
Your school’s career planning/career services/placement and alumni offices are arguably as important to recruiting prospective undergrads as your admission office is. Why? Without current, accurate data about the good jobs your recent graduates have taken, your recruitment program can’t convey a critically important—and highly influential—piece of information to your prospects!

I assume you’ll see other surprising findings in the comparative data in the two charts above. Let me know what you discovered, why it surprised you, and most important… what you’re going to CHANGE about the way you communicate with your prospective undergrads as a result of this fresh market research.

NOTE: TeensTALK® is Stamats’ three-times-per-year nationwide telephone study of college-bound teens designed to keep our (and your) finger on the pulse of the trends, attitudes, lifestyles, and knowledge that influence their college selection decision-making process. Findings from the 2009 FALL TeensTALK® Study are based on 500 responses from college-bound high school seniors; sampling was completed at random (probability sample) to provide a rigorous data set for accurate assessment of the college selection process. Stamats offers a companion TeensTALK® Focus study for colleges and universities that want to conduct a comparison survey of their inquiry pools and assess their peculiar institutional undergraduate recruitment challenges and opportunities against the backdrop of national findings.

Photo by aiesecinternational

Mike Frantz

Dear Smartest Central College (IA) Alum Ever,

Here’s my fear as those of us in higher education take your advice:

1. We’ll continue to publish our “placement rates” without being required to give a definition (there is no commonly accepted formula used in higher ed). Thus one college’s 92% placement rate might be for the entire class while another’s might be only for the 20% of the class that responded to their placement survey. One school’s 94% placement might be on graduation day while another’s is 4 years out.

2. We’ll continue to highlight the 3 extraordinary graduates who landed amazing first jobs with NASA, the Politburo and the Chicago Cubs believing that these case studies are indicative of the entirety of the class.

Here’s what we should do (or have done to us): NACAC should help us agree upon a standard definition of “job placement.” Then, annually, we should be required to publish (much like the Cleary Act) a report that details by major what percentage (with real gross and net numbers) of graduates are employed and/or in graduate professional school, a list of those employers/graduate&professional schools, salary range within category as well as mean salary, and locations of those job placements.

Finally, we should quit calling it job placement and start calling it job success or something like that. Placement makes it sound like the colleges are selecting the employers and jobs for the students when in fact credit should be given first to the students in succeeding in their job quests.
Eric Sickler

Two words, Michael: right on.