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Return to Bulletin Home - February 2007 |
Online Recruitment Trends Cheryl Darrup-Boychuck, CEO of USjournal.com, was a featured speaker during the 2006 ICEF Americas Workshop in Miami. Darrup-Boychuck presented a market intelligence seminar entitled, "eRecruitment: Top Seven Trends for 2007." The session identified a number of important trends and characteristics of the online environment, and classified each as either a strength, weakness, opportunity, or threat—invoking the "SWOT analysis" approach familiar to business students the world over: 1. Strength: No Need to Market Blindly Anymore. Every marketer knows how challenging it can be to segment customers and measure ROI (return on investment) in traditional marketing channels. The Internet presents new opportunities for targeting prospective students more precisely—through the use of advertising keywords, for example, by segmenting by language or geography, or through targeted cross-promotions with websites or groups that are connected to the audience you're trying to reach. "All effective marketing strategies start with a thorough self-analysis," says Darrup-Boychuck. "Who do we best serve? How do we want to capitalise on that success? Where do we want to go in the future? None of us can be all things to all people, and even now so many marketing campaigns spend lots of money trying to reach the whole world. You can, however, save money through effective targeting. The more focused a marketing campaign's objectives, the easier it is to implement effectively."
Cheryl Darrup-Boychuck's eRecruitment seminar in Miami. 2. Strength: Reach. There are more than one billion users on the Internet today, and online marketers can communicate to this worldwide audience very efficiently.
Source: InternetWorldStats.com 3. Weakness: The Digital Divide. In spite of the Internet's considerable reach, just over 16% of the world's population is online today. 4. Opportunity: The Digital Divide. If everyone is concentrating on the 16% of users already online, who is looking after the 84% of people that can't or won't access the Internet? "There are so many companies and institutions focused on the 16% of the population that is online," says Darrup-Boychuck. "If you can't differentiate yourself within that intensively competitive space, you're in trouble. How then could you serve that other 84% of the population—the part that is underserved at the present? We all need to think outside the box to explore the opportunity that this huge underserved population represents. We're going to see the second billion Internet users come online by 2015. In terms of global student mobility, this increase in Internet access to less affluent populations will mean a heck of a lot more inquiries about scholarships and financial aid. " 5. Threat: Cyber Security. Only 11% of higher education IT directors in the US report that their networks are "very safe" from hackers; 58% reported at least one security incident in the past year. At the same time, Internet users have serious concerns about protecting their privacy and private information online, and the relatively younger demographics that dominate today's web population are extremely savvy and aware of marketing techniques. Online marketers need to respect these concerns and conduct themselves in an honest and transparent way. "There needs to be less of an emphasis on controlling the flow of information, and more of an orientation to engaging current and potential students in a conversation," adds Darrup-Boychuck. "Automated over-communication can certainly damage a relationship." 6. Opportunity: Direct Online Funds Verification. As banking systems become more integrated and as admissions processing continues to incorporate more sophisticated and secure information systems, it will become possible to electronically verify funds for student-applicants. This can be done relatively early in the admission process, with the goal of minimising the incidence of fraudulent bank statements. 7. Threat: Temptation to Over-Engineer Websites and Processes. Overly complex websites or web processes interfere with ease-of-use (and so inhibit actual use) for students. "The key is to focus on user needs and the perspective of the user coming to your website," notes Darrup-Boychuck. "Take care when incorporating automated replies and filtering into your site, and design the look and navigation of your site to be as easy to use as possible." And remember that the nature of personal computing is changing again now that more and more people are accessing the web via mobile devices such as cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Good web design increasingly has to account for this type of mobile access. |
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