The recruiting of international students has historically relied on universities having partners on the ground around the world, agencies and partner pathway organisations, as well as relationships with peer and feeder institutions. Although these tried and tested methods will always be needed, we want to introduce you to an exciting new approach that utilises labour market data to target and align provision to where it will be most impactful, increasing your chances of successful recruitment campaigns in a world where employment outcomes play a part in student choices the world over.
A New, Data-Driven Approach
Any approach that seeks to be more targeted must essentially make the connection between courses being offered and the world of work, by answering the following questions:
- Where in the world are we likely to find the most demand for our courses?
- What skills that our courses teach are most in demand around the world?
- Which global companies employ the jobs that relate to our courses?
The university that can answer these questions will have a much better sense of which global locations are most likely to give them best return on investment for marketing their courses. However, answering these questions requires global data on labour markets across multiple countries.
What data is available?
Any university familiar with using Labour Market Insight (LMI), Job Posting Analytics (JPA), and skills data within the UK, will know how useful they can be. They help with understanding employer demand, and how this can be related back to courses that develop the kinds of skills needed by employers. When it comes to international data, the picture is more complex, given that the governments of different countries have very different approaches to collecting labour market data, making it very difficult to analyse and generate country-to-country comparisons.
However, some contemporary datasets are able to give us a more standardised picture across countries. For example, worker profiles, which can be gleaned from CVs on HR portals, or social media profiles, can be analysed in a consistent way no matter where they’ve come from. These anonymised and aggregated sources can be useful in helping us to understand who works where and in which jobs with which skills. We have been collating, and analysing these for a number of years now, to the point that we have around 230 million profiles from over 50 countries across the world. Furthermore, because we tag them with our standardised taxonomies, we have effectively been able to create a level playing field of profiles that we can then use to analyse for numerous metrics, including job titles, skills and employers. In addition, our JPA data enables us to understand hotspots of employer demand for particular jobs, skills and companies hiring across those regions.
Using the worker profiles data, we can look at at Analysts and Data Scientists in the APAC region. What we find is that the largest numbers are found in India, with Bangalore (220,500 profiles), Greater Delhi (140,600) and Greater Hyderabad (121,800) being the top three regions. If we then turn to the JPA data, we can see that of these three areas, the highest employer demand for Analysts and Data Scientists is in Greater Delhi, which has grown by 6.4% over the last quarter, whilst demand in both Bangalore and Greater Hyderabad has fallen.
We can then delve further into the worker profiles data for Greater Delhi in order to glean some more specific insights. For example:
The top three skills mentioned in these profiles are SQL (mentioned in 18.7% of profiles); Java (13.9%); and HTML (10.8%).
The top three jobs performed by these people are Sector Analyst (7.0% of profiles); Software Test Engineer (3.1%); and Project Lead (2.8%).
The top three companies employing these workers are HCL Technologies Ltd (3.4% of profiles); TATA Consulting Services (3.1%); and Accenture (3.0%).
How to use these insights
This kind of data can be of massive value to universities, particularly in terms of implementing more targeted marketing of courses, but also in a number of other areas as well.
In the first instance, by identifying where there are large numbers of people performing a certain job, a Marketing team could use this insight to better understand where to target particular short online courses and post-graduate courses, since these areas clearly have a ready workforce who could benefit from the kind of upskilling such courses offer.
Secondly, understanding where demand is growing for specific jobs and skills can help in the targeting of digital campaigns. For example, rather than running a blanket campaign for a Data Science programme across, say, Germany, the data shows demand for Analysts and Data Scientists in Bremen is up 32% over the last quarter, whereas it’s declined in Munich (-5%) and Stuttgart (-6%). Although there are obviously other factors involved, aligning campaigns to where there labour market demand is hot, can be powerful, especially when the employer demand data is cited in those campaigns.
Thirdly, the language of job titles in the data can be helpful to Marketing teams. Whereas course titles tend to be fairly generic, job titles are far more dynamic, so if a Marketing team understands which job titles are being employed in a certain area, this language can be used in the actual promotion of courses in those areas.
The same goes for the detailed skills language provided by the job postings and profiles data analytics. These terms can also be used by Course teams to add colour to course descriptions and can also be utilised by course teams who are delivering the provision to strengthen the employability of their students.
Finally, the detail on employers can be used to help universities understand who they might partner with, and also to direct their students to after graduating.
Whilst there will always be a need for universities to use the methods they have always used to recruit international students, using the kind of data and insights we’ve set out above can only enhance this process, giving a much clearer view of which markets are likely to give the best return on investment.
To find out more about how Emsi Burning Glass data can help your university develop a more targeted approach to international recruitment, go to our webpage, or watch our recent webinar.
