The ultimate student takeover

Peer recruitment is not a new concept. The student ambassador scheme is one of the oldest strategies in the higher education marketing playbook.

But at OK Student we took it one stage further.

My name is Nicholas Cuthbert, (former) Director of OK Student. I promote British universities and provide opportunities for talented students to study and work in the UK.?

In 2019 I swapped my university management role for a blank page with an award-winning private educational consultancy Vermilion Group. My goal was to expand their 'OK Student' brand and university application services to a wider global audience - and my first call was to talk to some of the students I’d counseled over the years to see if they wanted to be involved.

I wanted an entrepreneurial challenge - and as it turned out - that’s exactly what many students want as well.

If you took a poll in any classroom today and asked how many students in the room want to run their own business - I guarantee more than half would put their hand up. This is an entrepreneurial generation. The last thing they want is a job for life.

We took a strategic decision to hire as many students, graduates and placements as I could afford across all areas of the business. Admissions, counsellors, marketing, finance, business development, training, community, communications - we would consider students first. All the expertise I needed could be found on campus.?

My ego imagined I could mentor these students... the reality is they’ve been mentoring me.

The power of a community.

Award-winning platforms like Unibuddy and The Access Platform have harnessed the student ambassador scheme for the digital age. Instead of automated chatbots - prospective students can talk to the very same student ambassadors on a university website that they would meet on campus at an open day.??

This is powerful relationship marketing - having your existing customers answering the questions of your new customers and influencing them.

Personalization, authenticity, trust - these are the core values that all brands are trying to nurture because they build community. They aren’t the practical specifications of a product (the module list in HE in a prospectus) they are the emotional connection with a brand.??

By employing students I knew we could be true to these values.

I wanted a brand voice at OK Student that could speak to other students - the purest version of peer recruitment we could achieve.

In such a short space of time I have been amazed about the results.

The team have been running weekly live Q&A sessions and writing blog articles for a year - and while I imagined us talking about safe study abroad topics - our audience have engaged us with impactful discussions on themes I never expected.

We've covered topics like racism and xenophobia, gender dysphoria clinics, rent strikes, flight bans, the impact of COVID and Brexit on their study experience.

Real issues, affecting real students.

I couldn’t be prouder. My student-led team were giving impartial peer support when universities themselves were often silent on these matters.

An open day is where most student ambassador experiences begin and end. With some vouchers and a pat-on-the-back and the promise that the experience will look good on your CV. I always thought that was selling students short.

I wanted to give them all a job. I wanted them all to have a voice.

The importance of creating a bottom-up strategy or a 'constellation' business

It has been key to empower our student team to find solutions themselves to our business needs.?We have to trust them with the freedom to identify the best way to support their peers.

This article in the Harvard Business Review focuses on the value of allowing your team the time and space to create bottom-up initiatives that fall within the boundaries of your strategic goals.

Similar constellation business structures allow people to be 'stars' in their own right but part of a bigger picture. You remove power struggles and encourage collaborative value.

I cannot stress how impactful this approach has been at OK Student. In the face of a global pandemic - my team of students - have faced every challenge and found a solution.

They have a learning mentality. If they don’t know how to do something, they just find out. If a competitor or a brand they admire is doing something they like - they will not rest until they find out how to replicate it themselves.

There is an app for everything. There is an answer to everything. There is nothing they cannot do.

I couldn’t say the same about some seasoned marketing professionals I’ve worked with over the years and I include myself in this.?

In little over a year, the team have expanded the services of OK Student to over 40 different nationalities. They produced daily content that adds real value to their peers and gets plenty of positive comments from teachers, employers and fellow students. Win win.

Our lead cost-per-acquisition was extremely low because students found other students who wanted to apply from their own communities. This wasn't true for everyone, and the task became much harder in COVID times. But never-the-less peer-recruitment had infinitely higher conversion than PPC advertising.

Perhaps you noticed our growing brand?

It is no coincidence we announced almost weekly partnership agreements with more UK universities who see the value in not only our representation but in investing in talented graduates as part of the solution.

Those partnerships will still carry on in a traditional sense overseas but I had always hoped for more in the UK. We wanted university nominated employment with us, student trips and meet-ups, graduate training schemes, endless user-generated community and content about student life.

I wanted to close the loop by employing the very same students we all work so hard to recruit and educate.

Students supporting students.

This is the phrase we would always go back to as a team. We employ students to help other students with the application journey to study in the UK.

But it feels deeper than peer recruitment - it was part of a new company culture - an entrepreneurial mentality to innovate and serve our customers better and find our own way. It is true to say that at OK Student,- we were all students in a sense - always learning.

It is a source of great pride for me to see our first placement students have gone on to secure amazing jobs afterwards - they used us as a platform to elevate themselves, and made us stronger in the process. Shout out to Akshay Hande @StudyPortal.io who was the first.

But it was a special feeling to be able to offer jobs and salaries to those graduates who have helped build a new era of OK Student success - and very painful to have to take that away (see my previous announcement about capital spending cuts to the project).?The UK team were more than 99% students, graduates and placements just as I had hoped.

This was the ultimate student takeover.?

I always expected the next generation to come through and make me redundant. I guess they were beaten to it by COVID.

A strong vision - creates a strong belief system - which creates strong bonds between colleagues. I will always be ready to support this team and likewise I know they will go on to great things and open doors for me. Good teams are for life.

Note to editors: The original OK Student office in the UK has now closed. If you would like to know more about the OK Student story and this amazing team - please contact me via LinkedIn and I will be happy to connect. This journey was short for us - but I believe it is only just beginning for peer-recruitment.