Recruiting Strategies at Central Carolina Community College During COVID-19 - June 11, 2020
As lead instructor for the laser program at Central Carolina Community College (CCCC) in Lillington, North Carolina, we recruit for the program all year long, and especially during the spring semester, when many high school seniors are deciding what to do after graduation. The spring of 2020 was not any different. We had high school career fairs scheduled, prospective student program tours planned, recruiting trips to high school STEM classes scheduled, and a weekend laser workshop lined up. Then COVID-19 hit and wrecked all of our plans. In fact, we were scrambling just to get our current seated classes up and virtually running.
Following the cancellation of the Harnett County high school career fairs (due to COVID-19), Ms. Lindsey Spivey Hardee, Harnett County Schools Career & Technical Education School-to-Career Coordinator, reached out and offered to help get recruiting material to CTE students. Lindsey said, “If your college has any digital promotions, we can share with our students. We (HCS CTE) have created a folder students can access at home, which will include career development resources. Videos will only be viewable by our students for professional, educational use.”
With the help of two current first year CCCC laser program students, we decided to take advantage of Ms. Hardee’s offer. At this point, we were into the beginning of May. Realizing that COVID would probably not go away quickly, and we would not be able to proceed with our normal face-to-face recruiting activities, we also decided to establish a strong social media recruiting strategy. Our strategy consisted of four main approaches:
Since we were going to be distributing promotional material to external audiences, we first connected with Dr. Marcie Dishman, the college’s associate vice president of marketing and external relations to review, approve, and help with our work. Under Dishman’s leadership, the CCCC Marketing Department has been extremely supportive, giving assistance to creating and editing material and providing guidance on processes for college-related social media accounts. The department also worked to quickly expedite the plan and offered to help distribute the promotional material through other channels, like the main CCCC website. Dr. Dishman stated: “My team always enjoys working with Mr. Beasley and helping to increase awareness and promote the Laser & Photonics program. This program leads to well-paying jobs, and we are glad to showcase this opportunity to others.”
As of now, we have everything set-up and underway, including already making social media posts, and distributing promotional materials to CTE students. We are early in the process, but we hope these, and other project deliverables will help. Based on previous years of prospective student calls during my 19 years at CCCC, the volume of calls seems to be in line with previous years. In addition, though it is early, our number of first year laser student registrations is where it would typically be this time of year.
In addition, our second year laser student count has not been negatively impacted, thanks to the support of LASER-TEC with the Photonics Kits, help from the college’s administration in transitioning from seated to virtual classes, and an extensive set of student support resources, including WiFi access for students in campus parking lots.
Following the cancellation of the Harnett County high school career fairs (due to COVID-19), Ms. Lindsey Spivey Hardee, Harnett County Schools Career & Technical Education School-to-Career Coordinator, reached out and offered to help get recruiting material to CTE students. Lindsey said, “If your college has any digital promotions, we can share with our students. We (HCS CTE) have created a folder students can access at home, which will include career development resources. Videos will only be viewable by our students for professional, educational use.”
With the help of two current first year CCCC laser program students, we decided to take advantage of Ms. Hardee’s offer. At this point, we were into the beginning of May. Realizing that COVID would probably not go away quickly, and we would not be able to proceed with our normal face-to-face recruiting activities, we also decided to establish a strong social media recruiting strategy. Our strategy consisted of four main approaches:
- Create a new CCCC laser program promotional pamphlet and video to distribute to public school CTE students. Since CCCC’s service area covers three counties, we decided to not only distribute it to Harnett County CTE through Ms. Hardee, but to reach out to the other two counties, Lee and Chatham, for help in getting it to their CTE students.
- Create CCCC laser program Instagram and Facebook accounts and begin posting interesting laser lab pictures and short videos. The two laser students assisting with the project said that in order to capture prospective laser student traffic, the postings had to include some humor, be short, and not look like an advertisement!
- Reach out to three current 2020 graduates, who have already started working in the laser field, and ask them if they would be interested in creating a short video describing the following: why they joined the CCCC laser program; their journey through the program; if they were happy with their laser job and the outcome of their laser educational journey. All graduates agreed and created videos. We plan to make use of these videos through social media.
- Reach out to previous CCCC laser program graduates, who are currently working in the laser industry, to write articles about their “laser journey”, and hopefully obtain some pictures and short videos from them. Then, distribute these stories to media outlets and post appropriate sections of it on social media accounts. Five previous graduates were targeted, with a goal of completing one every two weeks.
Since we were going to be distributing promotional material to external audiences, we first connected with Dr. Marcie Dishman, the college’s associate vice president of marketing and external relations to review, approve, and help with our work. Under Dishman’s leadership, the CCCC Marketing Department has been extremely supportive, giving assistance to creating and editing material and providing guidance on processes for college-related social media accounts. The department also worked to quickly expedite the plan and offered to help distribute the promotional material through other channels, like the main CCCC website. Dr. Dishman stated: “My team always enjoys working with Mr. Beasley and helping to increase awareness and promote the Laser & Photonics program. This program leads to well-paying jobs, and we are glad to showcase this opportunity to others.”
As of now, we have everything set-up and underway, including already making social media posts, and distributing promotional materials to CTE students. We are early in the process, but we hope these, and other project deliverables will help. Based on previous years of prospective student calls during my 19 years at CCCC, the volume of calls seems to be in line with previous years. In addition, though it is early, our number of first year laser student registrations is where it would typically be this time of year.
In addition, our second year laser student count has not been negatively impacted, thanks to the support of LASER-TEC with the Photonics Kits, help from the college’s administration in transitioning from seated to virtual classes, and an extensive set of student support resources, including WiFi access for students in campus parking lots.
