postgraduate recruitment.
With over 15 years of experience in higher education marketing, I’ve specialised in postgraduate recruitment strategies that resonate with prospective students’ aspirations for career progression, flexibility, and personal growth. My approach combines face-to-face student engagement, digital strategy, and channel expertise to craft messaging and campaigns that navigate barriers and support curiosity, leading to applications.
In today’s climate where nearly half of England’s higher education providers expect to operate at a financial deficit due to falling international enrolments and other pressures, the role of effective postgraduate recruitment has never been more critical. According to recent statistics from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, there was a 6% decline in postgraduate taught entrant enrolments year-on-year, underlining the urgent need for targeted and efficient recruitment strategies.
By leveraging data-driven insight and a strong understanding of the postgraduate audience, I develop and implement recruitment pathways that attract quality applicants and support institutional goals and long-term financial sustainability. In an increasingly competitive and uncertain environment, optimising these pathways is vital to protecting and strengthening the well-being of the sector.
MY RESULTS
3,000+
Current students engaged with.
80%+
E-mail open rate for Master's study messages.
100+
Courses promoted
MY APPROACH
It’s my belief that post-graduate recruitment often suffers from a lack of traction within our culture.
In my experience, whilst the full details might not always be known, the concept of student loans, the impact a degree has on employability – even the duration of study, are ballpark known, even from those not engaging with the sector directly.
For many institutions in the UK, even those on undergraduate programmes are not aware of those elements for post-graduate level. Sometimes, it’s even a negative relationship with myths and outdated information still pervasive.
The core of my approach to post-graduate recruitment is around addressing that.
1.) Market insights
Course level messaging is great, but if the audience isn’t aware that Master’s study is for them too, then those messages fall on deaf ears.
Using platforms like Course360 and JISCs Discover platform to identify market gaps and trends.
2.) Remove barriers top of funnel – NOT at conversion stage
Although navigating barriers to conversion would normally feature later in most customer journey models, in my experience of working with current students, no matter how good the course promotion, they don’t realise they’re the intended audience and it falls on deaf ears. If we can remove the barriers first, the rest of the promotion is likely to be more effective.
3.) Product optimisation for the market.
Increasingly students want to work and study simultaneously, with Master’s courses being consumed closer to that as a CPD course. Working with colleagues to maximise how programmes can reflect this in their content aids promotion.
4.) Face-to-face is critical
We start to look at how to execute the strategy and what channels we’ll use to do it. From email, social, SEO, paid ads, webpage content and more. Tactics follow strategy, not trends.
Although Universities will have access to enough data and resources to run strong digital campaigns, the nature of the challenges in removal of barriers means effective fact-to-face engagement is critical top of the funnel, later supplemented by digital channels.
5.) Don’t have recruitment numbers as a KPI
Recruitment numbers are always implicitly expected to grow, we don’t need to focus on them as a KPI. We need to focus on the factors that cause recruitment numbers to grow. These shouldn’t be assumed, but be part of a strategy which addresses gaps or enhances strengths.