How do you choose? A Recruitment Modality Evaluation

Over a year ago, I was hosting a training session for a number of our new recruiters on our team. We were supporting the team with tips on how to request and book an engagement with a partner high school counsellor. During the session, a recruiter asked me a question “How do you choose whether you request a visit with a counsellor to be a presentation, a booth, or something different?”??

The question took me off guard. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I realized my answer was always rooted in assumption, experience, and often preference more than anything else. In the absence of a definitive past experience or a specific preference or direction from the counsellor, my personal preference as a recruiter is to offer a presentation. I find the presentations most engaging and most informative to help differentiate our university from another.

In my answer to the team, I spoke about meeting counsellors, students, and schools where they at and ultimately working with the counsellor to find the method that works best for their students. Some schools may have policies, nuances or other factors that must first be considered. With that said, there are many occasions where the school or counsellor does not have a preference and the decision for what occurs was largely up to the recruiter’s past experience or preference.

Since the question was posed to me, I’ve spent time with our data systems exploring an academic answer to the question above for the situations where the counsellor leaves the choice up to the recruiter. I shared some of my initial findings with a select group of partner counsellors recently, and many of their responses also surprised me. Although some counsellors had specific school policies they had to follow, many indicated a similar response to what I provided to our recruiters. They did their best to place the recruiter where their students are and support the preference (if provided) by the recruiter.

So often the data feedback loop between counsellor and recruiter can be one-sided and much of the data I worked for, is data that the counsellors wished they received from their partner recruiter. To be a better partner, I’m sharing a bit behind the curtain of some of the interesting findings I’ve come across over the last two cycles that I've been working with my team on to help provided a more data-driven response to the question.

Before I begin, here are some common definitions of some of the terms I’ve outlined below that we use on our team to define different recruitment modalities when engaging with partner high schools:

• Independent Presentation:?This is a formal in-person presentation offered independently by one recruiter at a school.
• Digital Visit:?This is a formal presentation offered independently by one recruiter virtually.
• Independent Booth:?This is a display-style event offered independently by one recruiter.
• Multi-Institution Fair:?This refers to a display-style event where multiple recruiters from different institutions attend.
• 2 or more engagements:?This refers to a combination of visit styles over multiple visits at different times, offered by one recruiter.

Question 1: Booth versus Presentation?

To begin, I wanted to start comparing the two most typical styles of school engagements: the display booth and the private presentation.

In Canadian High Schools:

In the 2023 intake, the booth-style event performed roughly 20% stronger than a presentation in the volume of applicants generated. This outcome has continued into the 2024 intake with the booth performing roughly 8% ahead of the presentation. This result surprised me last year as I assumed a presentation was always stronger than a booth and maintained that this outcome would switch when we reviewed registered or committed students. Surprisingly, in comparing the two by registrants, the booth continued to be stronger by 45% in the 2023 intake.

In International High Schools:

In the 2023 intake, the presentation-style event performed almost 30% stronger than a booth in the volume of applicants generated. Although still early in the cycle, the 2024 intake has seen an even stronger performance of the presentation with a 74% increase over a booth. In reviewing committed students for 2023, there was a 31% increase in registrants when a presentation was conducted at a school versus a booth.

Overall, I attribute both results to the familiarity of our institution. The perceived strength of a presentation is to better articulate the advantages of attending an institution by nature of the time a recruiter has with a student group. Conversely, a presentation may limit the amount of time a student may have to ask very specific or case-by-case questions. In situations where a student is already familiar with our institution, a booth may better serve their needs to help with their decision.

Digital:

Although our institution had been utilizing digital engagements for several years, digital presentations became a necessity to continue recruit during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, interest has dropped significantly with students being ‘zoomed out’. With that said, digital visits still offer a chance to engage with students when physical travel is not possible.?

Compared to an in-person presentation, a presentation was roughly 50% more effective than a digital one in 2023 in applications generated and over 100% better when comparing registrant numbers.

Question 2: Recruit independently or with other post-secondary institutions?

One other question a recruiter may ask themselves relates to travelling independently to a school or joining a group of post-secondary institutions to recruit together. There are some locations, particularly in Canada, where group travel is required or expected by the nature of provincial or national collaborative recruitment organizations. Internationally, given the volume of institutions visiting each high school, a counsellor may often request or recommend that visits be conducted as a group. I wanted to look at this though as there were situations where the counsellor cited to the recruiter that they thought we may benefit more from travelling with a group.

Within Canada:

In the 2023 intake, independent travel was roughly 11% stronger in generating applications compared to group travel and 10% better in reviewing registered students.?

Internationally:

The results were even stronger in 2023 to favour independent travel with a 65% increase in applications generated and a 150% increase in the number of registered students as compared to group travel.

Multiple Visits:

Although the above demonstrates a strong indicator for independent travel, it is also important to compare multiple visits as compared to a single visit. To no surprise, there was a 127% improvement in the volume of national applicants generated and a 56% improvement in international applications in 2023 when a school had more than one visit in a cycle. Registrations had similar results with a 61% improvement (nationally) and a 55% improvement (internationally) when a school had more than one visit conducted.

Question 3: When is the best time to visit?

At this point in my journey to address the original question, I began to ponder other variables in the process.

Time of Year:

For institutions such as ours with one traditional intake each year, there are typically two recruitment seasons in the fall and spring. Within Canada, we found that a fall-only visit was still considered the most optimal time but were surprised to see that it was only 11% stronger than a spring visit only in terms of applications generated. Furthermore, spring-only visits outperformed fall visits by 24% in comparing registered students according to our 2023 national data. Internationally, spring-only visits significantly outperformed fall-only visits by almost 19% for applications generated and a 145% improvement for registered students.

Time of Day:

For obvious reasons, the lunch hour break is typically the number one requested timeslot by guidance counsellors when booking independent engagements given it is the least intrusive on classroom instruction time. In reviewing the average number of applicants generated by timeslot for our current intake, the afternoon slot (2:30-4:30 PM) was the strongest performing by roughly 11%. The morning timeslot (7:00-11:00 AM) was the weakest by almost 16%.

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I hope you enjoyed the data above. Do any of the results surprise you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Thank you!

Steven Kelly