What story is your data telling you about your international recruitment?

At the British Universities' International Liaison Association (BUILA) conference, Shamim Ghani chaired a panel discussion with Trina Everall from stori, Gareth Topp at EduCo Accelerate and Oliver Quinn-Palmer from IDP Connect on: Adapting to an Evolving Digital International Office: Using Insights and Data to Tell your Story.

Sham asked the panel about questioning the data. “If systems are poor what do you do?”

Gareth has worked in a number of universities’ international student recruitment teams and his advice is, “Clarify exactly what the source is, why it’s reliable and how big the data set is - if you’re trying to influence academic staff and university senior management then you need to be able to answer those kinds of questions.”

That’s all well and good, but when the data’s incomplete what do you do? Which data sets do you use? Ollie says at IDP Connect they feel the university’s pain…

“We’re aware universities can’t work at the pace the private sector can. With a CRM on the horizon, the wheels can turn slowly. My advice is, go to your partners, use pathway providers, to get access to data (include HESA data) that will be your source of truth.”

Sham compounded the fact that universities want diversity and to tap into markets, “where we’re not very prevalent” - how do we reach broader audiences - how do we do that through storytelling?

Trina says, “From a news and media perspective - if you’re able to, collaborate with your wider communications and PR teams. Rachel Hall, education reporter for The Guardian taught me that the key is to take small individual stories and tap into broader societal themes which will give you a much quicker route to mass global audiences.

You’re looking to illuminate a broader problem as opposed to just keeping the world updated on what’s happening at one university.” 

So what does the data-driven future look like for an international student recruiter? Ollie concluded, “We can’t predict the future but we can map, model and predict what might happen.”

Need some help with your storytelling? Get in touch for content support: content@stori.works