Recruiting Through Social Networks

This morning, Campus Technology published a great article outlining student recruitment through Social Networks. Instead of a standard news article, the author scripted an interview with Brad Ward from Butler. The article touches a few points: Zinch, student blogging and Facebook.

For those of you unfamiliar with Zinch, it is a social network created by a few innovative undergraduate students who were frustrated with the current admissions search process that starts with the typecasting based on ACT/SAT test scores. Instead, they wanted to empower the prospective student by giving him/her an electronic avenue to display "more than a test score." The result is a social network that works as an intermediary between prospective students and colleges. Prospective students can create an account and colleges can "shop" for students based on self-identified student information (demographic, geographic, etc...).

To date, Zinch boasts:

• More than 475 colleges currently recruiting students on Zinch.
• More than 300,000 high school students have already created Zinch profiles.
• All 50 states, more than 160 countries, and over 19,000 high schools are represented by students currently on Zinch.

The idea behind Zinch is to create more qualified leads. Test purchases are a crap-shoot at best, but are really the most efficient mass-option at this point for lead generation. Tools like Zinch will slowly chip away at the test-score model as will demographic ads by Facebook and MySpace. Social Networks (whether directly like Zinch, or indirectly like Facebook and MySpace) are starting to level the playing field. Expect to see some more services pop up over the next few years, as well as new ways to leverage current services.

Other Recruitment Social Networks
While Zinch has set itself as an intermediary between prospective students and colleges, many colleges are setting up their own social networks for recruiting. A quick search on Ning.com, pulls up 10 pages identified as colleges with social networks. After sifting through the spam and alumni networks (since we are looking mainly at recruitment), a few stand to the top:

• Alfred University
  Alfred University which connects accepted students, current students, faculty and staff. Discover what makes AU truly special - the individuals who inspire the Alfred University community.
• California Lutheran University
  This social network site has been created for YOU to get to know more about California Lutheran University and to let you meet other students who have been admitted to CLU. Log-in to post-discussions, photos and much more.

While Ning is a quick, easy and free way to start a social network, we decided to implement a more robust social network that integrates with our CRM (a crucial, yet often overlooked part of the recruitment piece).

University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Last month, we started a social network for admitted High School Seniors. The social network - branded as ClubRed - currently has over 1,000 regular users and gives admitted students the ability set up their profiles and upload photos, search for friends, check and send messages, join discussions, read and comment on blogs, and review their Office of Admissions checklist for preparing to enroll at UNL. More information can be found here.