Campus Blog: Seeking someone different: Director of Recruiting and Admissions

Here's to the crazy ones.

  The misfits.

    The rebels.

      The troublemakers.

        The round pegs in the square holes.


You may recognize that quote from Apple's 1997 "Think Different" advertising campaign. Reportedly penned by Steve Jobs himself, the motto was Apple's way of reconnecting to their original creative spirit and re-establishing the company as a leader in innovation. More than ten years later, it's hard to argue that that effort was anything less than a stellar success.

And so it's with that same level of boldness that we're looking to identify and hire our Director of Recruiting and Admissions at Alpine Access University. But while the moniker may sound conventional, the actual job will be anything but. We're looking for someone who believes there's a better way to find a job than posting resumes and searching job boards. Instead, we want someone who thinks differently, someone who will help us create a new model based on certifying, matching, and placing individuals to their perfect job.

So if you're a misfit, a rebel, and you have a better way, read through our posting below then tell us all about yourself at careers@alpineaccessu.com.


Director of Recruiting & Admissions

This individual will oversee a newly formed operational arm of Alpine Access University that will envision future recruiting, lead generation, and admissions models and manage current recruiting and admissions marketing efforts. This individual will oversee acquisition efforts to generate qualified leads and convert them to new AAU admits and recruits. The successful candidate must be an excellent marketing strategist, strong people manager and digital / CRM marketer who understands how to most effectively use online and offline best practices to drive leads and convert inquiries to recruits and hires. In addition, this candidate must understand internal and external market factors and move staffing activities from a model of simple search and application toward a new model of admissions and placement.

Responsibilities

• Develop an acquisition marketing competency to develop, test and roll-out innovative strategies and tactics to outperform existing efforts. Maintain strong external view of acquisition, recruiting, hiring and staffing best practices.
• Understand lead acquisition and conversion best practices in other industries and leverage appropriately. Uncover and understand internal and external forces and trends and discern how they impact our business and can be leveraged by AAU. Help create a new model of recruiting and staffing that marries traditional lead generation with new education and job placement services.
• Develop a deep understanding of the work-at-home job-hunter to develop more effective marketing and recruiting programs.
• Lead development of annual strategic marketing plans for acquisition and recruiting.
• Oversee strategic direction, creative development, campaign execution, performance assessment and optimization across online lead generation, display media, search engine marketing, Web site marketing, and database marketing/CRM.
• Assess options for and develop as needed agency relationships.
• Work closely with AAU Learning Design/Development/Delivery and Learning Technology departments.
• Work with operational Account Managers on initiatives across the university.
• Supervise, develop and motivate AAU Admissions and Recruiting team and extended Alpine Access operations team (flex recruiters).
• Work with Alpine Access Director of Marketing and Communications in relevant branding and company-wide campaigns.
• Spearhead the testing, analysis and refinement of online and offline marketing campaigns in order to maximize the effectiveness of inquiries and conversion. Help build a culture of plan, test, measure, expand.
• Manage the acquisition and recruitment portfolio to drive an efficient cost per hire by source and across sources. Regularly optimize spending mix.
• Establish performance metrics and track marketing performance to ensure measurable deliverables that are successful, tied to business objectives and are profitable.

Requirements

The ideal candidate for this position must be experienced in strategy development, direct marketing, digital marketing, people management and cross functional collaboration, with proven acquisition/retention capabilities. A combination of future oriented strategy development, digital marketing and recruiting experience is critical. The candidate should also possess working familiarity with psychometrics and other science-based approaches to recruiting and hiring.

Specific experience, qualifications and personal characteristics should include:

• Strong track record of envisioning, developing and executing breakthrough, future-oriented differentiated strategies, with a track record of driving success.
• Proven ability to lead cross functional teams.
• Significant understanding of online media, paid search, natural search, web site optimization, and database marketing
• Experience managing an organization
• Demonstrated high energy and strong work ethic; known for a resourceful approach to problem-solving and data-driven/performance-based marketing solutions
• Strong interpersonal, communications and presentation skills
• Ability to establish early credibility at all levels of the company and with external business partners
• Strong business and financial skill set with a demonstrated ability to effectively analyze marketing campaigns, individual direct marketing components and demographic targets; ability to create templates to track performance/optimize return on marketing investment
• Bachelor's Degree is a must; MBA or related post-graduate degree is strongly preferred.

Key Skills

Strategic Skills: Ability to create comprehensive acquisition marketing strategies in support of recruiting and hiring goals, as well as broad business strategies.

Leadership Skills: Ability to create an energized climate in which people want to do their best; envisions big ideas that align with current strategy; and steadfastly pushes self and others for results.

Business/Financial Skills: Ability to effectively analyze financial marketing metrics and to budget and forecast realistic response, cost and performance goals for all acquisition programs.

Management Skills: Ability to effectively direct, manage, and develop direct reports and the team as a whole.