Still more reasons you should recruit Gen Y to help you recruit Gen Y

No, the title wasn’t a typo. In past blog posts I’ve strongly hinted that college admissions professionals should get help from student interns and other colleagues who are Millennials, to make the best use of technology as a recruiting tool.

Looks like I’m not the only one. Just four days ago, Sylvia Ann Hewlett wrote a post for the Harvard Business Review with the unambiguous title, “Let Gen Y Teach You Tech.” Among other things, she describes the way Time Warner recruited college students at “Gen Y Mentors.”

And it turns out, these mentors are just waiting for you to ask them for help.

Last week on the Why Gen Why blog, Crystal Olig offers advice to her fellow Millennials on how to cope with Gen Y stereotypes at work. Her first tip: “Educate your more seasoned (ie, old) coworkers.”

Other tips include volunteering to test new technology and applying social networking skills “to make your company look good.”

As she elaborates on these points, one of the first things she mentions is, “Gen Yers are all about teamwork.” In other words, you’ve got a resource of tech-savvy people who are willing–even eager–to help out.

Back in the days of dial-up when I went to college, we had student reps who visited high schools to recruit new applicants. You should give these enthusiastic students the freedom to make your institution’s social media efforts shine–if you’re not doing this already.

This idea seems to be catching on.

Monday Funny

New hardware upgrade complete!

The University WebChat hardware upgrade is complete. Let us know if you have any issues or questions:
http://www.universitywebchat.com/support/

Thanks!

Two simple things you should remember about Millennials

A couple of items caught my attention this morning.

First was a post in The Millennier in which Leah Hennessy knocks all the “well intentioned but TERRIBLE advice” about Millennials that pops up all over the Internet. She gives the example of a condescending employee handbook aimed at Millennials, and suggests a simple cure: Recruit a couple of Millennials to create the handbook, and it will resonate.

This confirms something that the University WebChat team has said on this blog and in our white paper. Get your students involved in the recruiting process. Put them on your chats and blogs. Let them make and post a video about your institution. Seriously, mull this over during the weekend.

And while we’re on the topic of weekend mullings, here’s something else to think about.

USA Today ran yet another story about the most-talked-about generation. And the paper came up with a new name for them: The Recession Generation.

About a third of the way in, the article quotes an adolescent psychologist who says Millennials are seeking “happiness not based on economic success.” He notes, “they talk more about having autonomy and freedom, not being as enslaved to material goals that they perceived their parents being caught up in.”

It struck me that this is more or less what experts were saying about Generation X a couple of decades ago. And about the Boomers before that.

“Generation X” got their title by rejecting the values and lifelong career paths of their parents. Freedom and autonomy were so important to young X-ers that in The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generation X is called “The Nomad Generation.”

The world is being flooded with research and data and commentary that imply Millennials are a new species, or a freak of nature. The technology and means of communication may have changed, as they always do, but basic human nature stays the same. All you need is an iPhone, a good blog and some webchat software. If you’re still uneasy, take Leah’s advice and recruit a few Millennials to help you out.

In many ways Millennials really are different. But a lot of what passes as characteristic of a new generation is really characteristic of youth in every generation. Don’t let the issue get too clouded. Keep it real.

Join me for a free webinar: How To Conduct a Web Chat

The webinar will cover topics including web chat best practices, how to market to millennials and a demo of our web chat product (University WebChat).

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PDT

Register Now!

Podcast: The Web and the Changing Admissions Game

From the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Tech Therapy” podcast series:

Warren Arbogast and Scott Carlson (Photograph by Ron Aira)

Listen Now

Avoid attrition with summertime chats

A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article about the many new factors that make it so hard to know just how many students are actually going to register in the fall.

First, there’s the new problem of “stealth applicants” who gather information online, anonymously, before applying. It’s very hard to predict or track these applicants, and once they do apply it’s still difficult to read their level of commitment and interest.

Then there’s the “melting” phenomenon–some who are accepted don’t enroll, and some who enroll just don’t show up in the fall.

How can you address this problem?

Our short answer is to keep the lines of communication open. The corollary is that you should offer a few open lines to begin with.

Online, you can encourage stealth applicants to reveal themselves sooner by offering ways to interact, from surveys to message boards to live chats.

As you get more and more applicants interested in your institution, you can use summertime chats to cement the relationship. Inviting your applicants and enrollees to meet faculty, staff, and each other through live chat is a low-cost way to establish deeper relationships early on.

This will help shorten the time that stealth applicants remain in the shadows. And if it doesn’t positively increase the number of applicants who ultimately register, at least the level of involvment in these chats will give you a rough gauge of the level of genuine interest.

Best of all, these summertime chats will pay dividends over the long term. You’re creating a positive experience for incoming Freshmen that will help build a stronger campus community. You may inspire the newcomers’ younger friends and siblings to apply in the future.

Summer is traditionally a period of downtime in academia, but if you’re willing to liven things up a little bit, you’ll be well rewarded further down the road.

Paper or plastic? Express Check-In Comes to the College Fair

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Eric Hoover writes, “Pens and pencils are so last century. And at some college fairs, they may soon become obsolete.

Recently, the National Association for College Admission Counseling introduced bar-code scanners at several of its national college fairs, which attract 750,000 high-school students each year. The technology allows applicants to share their contact information with colleges — without having to fill out cards at booth after booth.

Under the new system, students can complete an online registration form that requires them to submit their names, telephone numbers, and home and e-mail addresses, as well as their ages, ethnicities, and areas of academic interest. They then get their own printable bar codes to take to the fair.”  Full article.

Webisodes as the next marketing tool for higher education?

I may be completely wrong about this, but hear me out. Big companies like Coca Cola are creating Webisodes, essentially a TV series that’s aired online, where their product plays an intrinsic role in the plot. It’s a great way to reach Millennials where TV and print ads fail, it lets online media earn some money, and it puts product placement on steriods.

I suggest admissions offices try to copy this idea. As an institution of higher learning, you have the potential to do a much better job at a dramatically lower cost.

Coca Cola has the daunting challenge of making Nestea an intrinsic part of the plot. In your institution’s Webisodes, the campus would be the natural setting, and campus life would by its nature remain at the core of the plot. You wouldn’t ahve to worry about being sensitive in your product placement, because your “product” is what most viewers want to see.

Assuming your school has a healthy pool of film, media, and fine arts students, your production costs would be virtually zero. Webisodes could become a part of the curriculum, tapping into a wealth of creative energy.

On the one hand, your institution could provide access to cameras, editing software and other resources that would enable the project to stand out from the casual YouTube video recorded off a cell phone. In return, you wouldn’t need Coca Cola’s giant budget because your writers, actors, and crew would be working for grades and credits. This could also be an excellent job as part of a work-study program.

The key to making this work is getting the students to own the project and run with it. You may have to impose some obvious guidelines, such as forbidding racism and excessive drug and alcohol abuse. But if the participants get the message, “We won’t censor you but you will be graded on this” they’re likely to do a first-rate, professional job.

Coca Cola is paying to run their Webisodes on game consuls and some internet sites. If you’ve got the budget, it may help to do some of this as well. But even if you just run your Webisodes on free sites like YouTube they’ll come up in a search, and your students and alumnae will share them with friends and family.

The trickiest part of this, especially for a large institution, would be the necessary collaboration across multiple offices, departments, and disciplines. I didn’t say this would be easy. But there’s a phenomenal opportunity here. I’d like to see someone do it.

It’s not you, it’s the size of the squirrels

The Choice Blog from the New York Times discusses recent postings on the College Confidential web site under the conversation thread, “Stupidest reason a child won’t look at a college.”

…”it was the size of the squirrels at the University of Michigan, a favorite subject in this forum, with others writing to validate the abnormally large size of Ann Arbor’s squirrel population and offer a link to the University’s ’squirrel club’”… (note: perhaps this student had a point!)

…”Simple factors such as name, color and mascot were critical for some. One parent writes that her ‘Son refused to visit/consider a school that is named after a toothpaste’”…

There is a good chance that your admissions department does not have power over squirrel size or the school colors but as, Rebecca R. Ruiz writes, “the dialogue has offered parents perspective on their children and their thought processes.”