What kind of things does a recruiter do?

As recruiters, we’re engaged in all different kinds of communication: through the UvA website, lead generation (CRM), social media, between current and future students (Unibuddy), and through emails. The purpose of our work is to ensure that promising leads (international and Dutch) and interested prospective students are converted into students at our university. This is done by sending mailings during different phases of the process of choosing a programme, and by offering information the student needs to select a university or study programme. An important part of our work is the communication process after students have been accepted by Admissions. At that point, it goes without saying that we want them to come here for their studies! We obtain leads through fairs, online campaigns, and from visitors to our own web pages. There’s also our network of partners in certain countries who take care of the local marketing. We work closely with the Admissions Office and the Marketing and Communication department.

How many people are on your team and what are their roles?

There are 3 people on our team: Alessa Boer, Dayenne Waaldijk en Ulrika Honée. Since we’re a small team, we do a lot of our work together and we consult with each other regularly. Alessa and Dayenne are mostly involved in communicating with prospective students (mailings, CRM, web), while Ulrika is responsible for online marketing, fairs, and maintaining contact with our agents. We also have a student assistant working on our team, and this year that’s Cas Hofstee.

Has your work changed much over the years?

Yes. We started with CRM a few years ago in order to ‘catch’ prospective students at an earlier stage. Students have so many choices, not just in the Netherlands, but across the globe as well. This has now been developed into a department that focuses on lead generation, email marketing and helping students through providing them with information through the websites and our agents abroad. We try to align our information as much as possible with the target group and try to give it a personal tone.

How has COVID-19 affected your work?

Communication has become more intensive because new needs have emerged. Students are more uncertain about the choices and processes, and that means more explanations are needed throughout all the phases.

What are you working on at the moment?

We’ve had to communicate quite frequently about the new BSc Business Analytics (BAN), because the procedure for registering changed recently. At the moment we’re also sending a lot of welcome emails to students who have been accepted. We’re guiding them through the registration process because that’s fairly complicated. We’ll be doing this for the rest of the summer to make sure we guide and retain this target group before they start their studies in September.