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I will preface this blog by letting you know I am not, nor claim to be an admissions expert. I do like think I know a little bit about sales though, especially phone sales.
Phones are the lifeline of my business. If a potential candidate or client can’t reach us, we are loosing money, quickly. I think the same holds true for admissions, another craft that relies heavily on phones.
When my recruiters are calling into schools to identify and source potential candidates I can’t tell you how many campuses have no one answering the phones. I understand this is the technological age and have no problem dealing with an auto-attendant. The real shock comes when I “press 1 for admissions” and then get a voicemail at 10:30AM in the morning!!! What if I was a student inquiry? Don’t most schools spend thousands on admissions training, lead generation, hi-tech tracking software, and complex phone systems? Then why would they not have someone answer the phone? Or at least have it forwarded to a third party call center that can gather the relevant information and pass it on to the admissions team to follow up on.
There is an old saying in sales when the phone rings: “there is money on the line.” Campuses work so hard to attract potential students. It seems such a waste to have that hard work pay off, only for the student to find out, no one is home….
Vincent Scaramuzzo is the President of Ed-Exec, Inc. One of the leading executive search firms in education. He has consistently been ranked in the top 2% of all recruiters worldwide by Management Recruiter’s International, the world’s largest executive search firm. Vincent is also a contributing author to Career College Central’s magazine and web site. As a specialist in the education field, Scaramuzzo works nationally with Universities, Colleges, Online and Career Schools. He can be contacted at vincent@ed-exec.com 860-781-7641.
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1 Comment on "Is there anybody home?"
I have worked in public, private and for profit higher education. In my public higher education experience, I found a huge disconnect between enrolling students, budgets and technology.