Finding a Manageable Approach to Improving Admissions and Recruitment

Author: Nick Van Haeften

If your Admissions and Recruitment team is using manual processes, and separate systems, and is lacking the tools they need to easily connect with students—they are probably dealing with gaps in efficiency and relying on incomplete data.

Aside from making it difficult for staff to perform optimally, this creates problems operationally and lessens an organization’s appeal to both current and prospective students.

Where to Start

Identify areas for improvement:

• What is your team spending the majority of their time and effort on?
  • Where are they losing time and falling short?
  • How many manual processes, spreadsheets, systems, etc. are involved in day-to-day operations?
  • Is your team answering repeat questions or handling repetitive tasks?

• How accurate is the data they’re working from?
  • Is data connected and up-to-date?

• How easily can your team, students, and prospects complete admissions and recruitment-associated tasks?
  • How easily can they locate information or communicate about these tasks or processes?

Try not to be overwhelmed if you find a number of gaps, or need help further identifying issues.

Making Improvement Manageable

Look for a cross-functional solution to provide maximum value. It should work well for your team, and your team should be comfortable using it, which will require some degree of configuration and training to ensure best practices.

Both of these things will impact your budget, but there are great budget-friendly options out there, so make sure you’re working with a solution partner that is both knowledgeable and respects project limitations.

After issue identification, be sure to determine if there is any overlap, if there may be other areas of potential ROI, and fully assess short- vs long-term solution benefits; focus on:

• Optimizing recruitment and admissions processes,
• Insight into the enrollment funnel and student success,
• Centralization and better management of student information,
• Enhancing communications and engagement,
• And improving the overall student, faculty, and staff experience.

Our Recommendations

We’ve found that leveraging a combination of Salesforce Education Cloud, Pardot, Admissions Connect, and an application form—addresses the criteria listed in the previous section while allowing for configuration to meet an institution’s own unique needs and goals.

• Admissions Connect is Salesforce’s Higher Ed offering focused on application management, student engagement, and harnessing related data for things like reports and recommendations.
  • For more information see our previous Admissions Connect blog, the Salesforce site linked above, or contact us.
• Used in conjunction with Education Cloud, Pardot, and an application form it creates a well-rounded, value-driven solution.

Having had requests for both ‘Quickstart’ and tiered product and service packages by Higher Ed organizations wanting a manageable approach to improvement for their people, timelines, and budgets, we’ve created Recruitment and Admissions Implementation Packages.

If you have any questions about finding and addressing your institution’s needs and goals, or would like additional solution information—contact us. We’re here with straightforward answers and feedback, with no obligations.