Part I: The Challenges of Finding the Right People in Enrollment

By Aaron Basko, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services, University of Lynchburg

Finding and keeping good people has always been one of the biggest challenges in the enrollment field. Gone are the days when it is good enough to just hire a few recent graduates with no experience, give them a few weeks on the road, then turn them loose to recruit students all over the country.

Why is the hiring process so much more difficult?

The world has changed around us—in ways that make it harder and harder to find good people. Let’s take a look at some of the changes.

Shifting Expectations and Perspectives

On the Admissions side, the skill sets we need have evolved from giving tours and talking to students at college fairs to developing communication plans and carrying out “moves management” strategies. In financial aid, new employees need to know good practice and the ever-increasing regulatory environment.

Employees have also changed. For the most part, the Gen Z graduates we attract to most entry-level job postings are mobile minimalists. They are not looking for an organization to be loyal to for a decade or more. They are looking for a flexible job that rewards them highly, but one that fits into the other priorities of their lives.

We used to joke about being in the enrollment business for “3 years or 30,” but many new hires are not making it to three before they are either bailing out for something shinier, or we are wishing they would. This is a major problem because conventional wisdom is that it takes at least one whole cycle for someone to be trained, since the work changes seasonally. This makes enrollment offices sometimes feel like a constant revolving door of hiring and brain drain.

An Open Field

One of the things that I have always loved about both admissions and financial aid is that they are open to anyone with aptitude and the willingness to work hard. New staff come from all majors, or from other work experiences. You can enter the field with a decade of work experience in sales or teaching, or you can start with no experience at all.

That was my story. Like many other students in the social sciences in the 1990’s, I graduated with no clear career path. I delayed the decision by going to graduate school and came out a year later facing the same dilemma.

I had worked with a really dynamic admissions counselor when I chose my college. Desperate for some good advice, I called him and asked what he thought about me trying to get into higher education. He responded, “You should try admissions. Either you will love it and make a career of it, or it will teach you what you really do love.” I took his advice, and 25 years later, I am still here. Admissions, and now enrollment management, has taught me a lot about what I love, and it has allowed me to influence a lot of great young people.

I was fortunate because I had a master’s degree and spoke Spanish, so the hiring committee was willing to take a chance on me. But not all candidates trying to enter the field have those advantages. Indeed, some of the best hires I have ever made looked like unlikely candidates. I’ve hired burned-out teachers, healthcare workers, and even a weather anchor, and they all turned out to be stars for me. But it is often hard for unconventional staffers to get a start because they don’t fit the mold of the former tour guide captain who wants to make a career in higher education.

What can we do to make it better?

I find it puzzling that there are multiple places to go to get a roster of potential cabinet-level hires in enrollment, but outside of this—where 90% of the hiring is done—there is no place for me to go to find entry-level staff with great potential. Why is that?

There must be a better way. The world has evolved around us. Does it still make sense for us to hire and train enrollment people the way we have since late last century? We have professionalized our enrollment work at the top, with complex modeling, digital advertising campaigns, and big data, so isn’t it time we also started to professionalize from the ground-up?

With all the disruption in the hiring landscape for the field, it feels like time for a change. Now would be a great moment for us as professionals to define the skill sets we are expecting and share them more universally as a profession. Let’s tell people what it means to be an enrollment professional and hold them to it.

This is a great moment for us to work with our Human Resources offices to point out that the processes used for other areas don’t really work for us. We need to be able to move quickly in the hiring process to replace someone within weeks, not months. We need more flexible policies for identifying early on if we don’t get the right people—and provide better off ramps for them. And if we are going to hire young graduates, we need more flexible models that allow us to create internships and training programs to get them ready while they are still in school.

The last two years have reshaped the ground beneath us in the job market. Rather than limping back to the way we have done things poorly for the last few decades, let’s embrace the change and rethink the way we identify and cultivate new talent.