Recruitment Best Practices
There are many approaches to identifying, contacting and encouraging promising applicants. In addition, the disciplinary interests and personal background of prospects can strongly influence what they find engaging and persuasive.
Staff at the Rackham Graduate School are ready to collaborate with U-M graduate degree programs on their recruitment efforts. Take a look at what’s available through the website of our Office of Graduate Student Success. These include recruiting resources for faculty, staff and advanced graduate students.
Encourage prospective students to take a moment and register their contact information and areas of interest through our website. Once they register we provide prospects with a UMID number. This in turn allows you to better identify and communicate with potential applicants to your program through the M-Pathways system.
Quick Tips
Examples from the University of Michigan
- Biomedical Engineering
- Among recruitment strategies in this department is the approach of drawing upon those in the field in addition to their current faculty. For example, they make certain to involve local alumni in their recruiting events. They also invite department chairs from other universities to give seminars here at U-M on their current research. This encourages the visiting faculty to develop connections with Biomedical Engineering so that they would feel more comfortable recommending their students consider our U-M program when they are applying to graduate school.
- Chemical Biology
- Faculty and graduate students who represent the doctoral program at recruiting events are provided with a succinct list of talking points. This functions as a FAQ reference so that the recruiters can answer the questions most often asked by those who are considering a research degree.
- Download: Chemical Biology Doctoral Program Talking Points
- Geological Sciences
- This department found an easy way for faculty and students to assist with recruitment efforts. Researchers are asked to contribute just one PowerPoint slide that highlights exciting research taking place in the lab. This material then can be packaged together in a variety of presentations and is readily available to take on all recruiting trips.
- Immunology
- Both faculty and students proactively go after admitted students in an effort to persuade them to select U-M over other offers. One of the major activities is a recruiting weekend (with an alternate option available) in conjunction with PIBS. The department’s student services coordinator involves students by a reminder about the importance of the weekend and an invitation to the various events.
- Download: E-mail Event Invitation
- Industrial Operations and Engineering
- Their efforts to convert admitted students to enrolled students include a very active recruiting weekend. Although it is held during the same weekend as IMPACT at the College of Engineering, IOE leaves participation in IMPACT activities up to the visiting students. In general, IOE wants to keep the visitors together so that they will start to form a cohort. They believe the better they connect, the higher the yield. Saturday activities include campus tours by other graduate students, dinner at a downtown restaurant, and live entertainment. Then the current graduate students take the recruits out on the town.
- Master of Science in Information
- The School of Information shared a list of their coordinated recruiting activities for 2007-2008 which are designed to increase the number of qualified applicants. One of the goals is to balance mass marketing campaigns with more targeted recruiting activities. This list focuses mostly on recruiting activities to increase applications, but they also have a range of activities during the admission recruiting season that concentrate on converting admitted students to matriculated students during the winter term. Through all of these marketing efforts the School of Information works to collect response rates and analyze campaign effectiveness.
- Download: MSI Primary Recruitment Activities Executed for 2007-2008
- Materials Science and Engineering
- Many consider “give-aways” to be a necessary recruiting tool. At graduate fairs and campus visits you see an array of logo-laden bags, pens and similar items pressed on prospective students. This year MSE sought to make this a value-added item: instead of another mug or keychain, they distributed pen drives with a data file promoting MSE programs that can’t be deleted.
Examples from Other Universities and Organizations
- Admissions & Recruitment: Advice for Undergrads
- Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- The Office of Dean for Graduate Education at MIT provides descriptive advice about their application process that is intended to encourage undergraduates by demystifying the application process and providing tips about what they really need to do to be successful.
- Visit: Admissions & Recruitment: Advice for Undergrads
- A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State
- Source: Penn State University
- This excerpt from a strategic planning report presents the three major goals of the Graduate School for recruiting and retaining a diverse student body in 2004-2009. It provides a useful shift in perspective from the departmental to that of the larger institution.
- Visit: A Framework to Foster Diversity at Penn State
- Building Effective Web Resources for Graduate Recruiting and Retention
- Source: Council of Graduate Schools
- A presentation produced by the University of Missouri on building effective web resources for graduate recruiting and retention.
- Visit: Building Effective Web Resources for Graduate Recruiting and Retention
- Recruitment and Retention Plan to Enhance Diversity: Frequently Asked Questions
- Source: National Institutes of Health, Office of Extramural Research
- A succinct list of recruiting questions.
- Visit: Recruitment and Retention Plan to Enhance Diversity: Frequently Asked Questions
- Sloan Guide to the Successful Recruitment of Minority Students into Science and Engineering Ph.D. Programs
- Source: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- The guide is intended as a reference manual for faculty and recruiters in search of graduate students in the areas of science, engineering and mathematics.
- Visit: Sloan Guide to the Successful Recruitment of Minority Students into Science and Engineering Ph.D. Programs
- Strategies for Motivating Undergraduates to Attend Graduate School
- Source: Council of Graduate Schools
- A presentation produced by the Council of Graduate Schools on strategies for motivating undergraduates to attend graduate school.
- Visit: Strategies for Motivating Undergraduates to Attend Graduate School
- Techniques for Successful Recruitment of Diverse Students
- Source: Virginia Tech
- The Graduate School at Virginia Tech provides a succinct description of the most effective ways to identify and make persuasive contact with prospective students. While the focus here is on underrepresented domestic students, the advice applies to all domestic students.
- Visit: Techniques for Successful Recruitment of Diverse Students