Yesterday Jeb Banner did a post on Small Box Blog about Zappos.
The gist of his post is that Zappos’ most valuable asset is their culture, and that the hiring process is geared towards preserving that culture. They’ll readily turn away applicants who don’t fit the culture, even when it means rejecting otherwise highly qualified individuals.
This sounds suspiciously like the admissions procedure at institutions of higher education throughout North America. Your job isn’t just to act as a greedy filter to snatch up the best and the brightest while blocking the kids whose test scores don’t pass muster.
There is a much more nuanced process of discovering and nurturing students who will both benefit from and contribute to your institution’s culture.
The right content on your admissions site can help this process by pre-screening a lot of potential applicants.
In his post, Jeb Banner points out that “the web is forcing transparency on businesses.” You could easily replace the word business here with campus, university, college, and so on.
We raised this point in our recent white paper. Millennials are going to post their views of your institution, warts and all, in countless blogs, YouTube videos, and other sites. If applicants can find some of the good, the bad, and the ugly on your own site, you’ll save them some time and help them decide if you’re right for each other.
So you might as well have a few areas in your admissions blog where your students have free reign. Prospective students will appreciate that you’re keeping it real.
