Case Study: What It Takes to Recruit the World’s Top Students

Last Updated on November 17, 2017

Yes, you are a superstar recruiter.

Yes, you are an amazing student recruitment officer.

Yes, you have the communication skills, the experience, and the will to attract and recruit the best talent out there!

Yes, you can travel to a big city and deliver four presentations to four different schools or participate in 2 Academic Fairs, all in the same day!

And yes, we know that you and your team members present, offline and online in front of diverse groups of top performing students from Vienna, Nicosia and Athens to TunisCebu and Laos.

But is it enough?

Throughout our five-minute feedback sessions with 42 student recruitment officers, after their first five sessions on 100mentors, we figured that their main aim is to establish a meaningful conversation and relationship with the students that:

a) have a genuine interest in their field of studies
b) are top-performers, and
c) are a great fit for their school’s programs (culture, diversity, curriculum-wise).

The recruitment officers wish to maximize the chances that they will participate in a continuous and fruitful interaction with the students in a safe environment, where students can find all the relevant information needed for making conscious decisions, towards their application success.

Are you reaching students in remote geographies?

The continuity issue becomes extremely hard to manage especially in schools located in remote geographies, like most of our African school partners.

Recruitment managers and officers visit those schools during their yearly roadshows, but they can hardly leverage on those visits with identifying the most qualified students and engage in meaningful conversations with them throughout the academic exploration period.

Thus, the students end up applying to certain traditional, convenient options, without considering a handful of other great universities that might be a greater fit to their profiles and needs.

Case in point: This international school in Namibia.

The students of the Windhoek International School, Namibia, wanted to learn more about studying in the USA, Canada and the UK. This is a school with 30 students per class, most of whom continue their studies abroad, year after year.

Due to the travel costs, plus the fact the school is not around many other “target” schools, officers found it very hard to “invest” in such a student audience. Which is a great pity for both sides, for the profound reason that:

a) the students limited their options to a narrow list of alternatives, and
b) the universities did not manage to recruit amazing and diverse profiles to ideally complement their student mosaic.

Within the first two weeks on 100mentors, three universities (University of Essex, McGill University and Case Western Reserve University) presented their programs in Virtual Academic Fairs, among various other speakers (alumni, current students and faculty members) who “met” with students in grades 9-12 from the WIS, Namibia in 20-minute sessions and kept in contact with their best-fit students.

What did it change?

These 6 core aspects: 

How to Start Recruiting the World’s Top Students 

100mentors is the platform and network empowering students to connect with mentors on-demand to guide them in their most important academic and career decisions. With 100mentors, schools enable students to open up their circles of influence to include mentors from 300+ universities and 500+ companies across the world. Learn how companies and universities are tapping into this quality pool of potential program and job candidates.

Nikos gets out of bed every morning to bridge the gap between formal education and 'paideia' (values, attitudes & role-models). He delivers experiential workshops to people who want to develop their public-speaking skills. At 100mentors, he helps Student Recruitment Officers connect with top-students worldwide.

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