For prospective students, career prospects will always play a major role in their decision of which programme to pursue, and where. Asia Careers Group tracks the career paths of over 50,000 of Asian students, who have graduated from Australian and UK Universities and returned to Asia.
Why is Graduate Outcomes data relevant for student recruitment?
Hardly any student will pursue a University education out of interest alone. Most go to university with a job or occupation in mind, whether it’s in science, the corporate world, as an entrepreneur or something else.
So the question of “where to apply?” is closely linked to the question “What do I want to become?”. If prospective students aren’t already thinking of what kind of career they are preparing for by choosing a particular education path, then they should be.
Having robust, longitudinal data on the graduate outcomes, average incomes and career paths of your graduates allows you to understand more about your own institution and be able to differentiate it from the crowd through the outcomes of your graduates. It helps with answers to questions like:
- What are the top-10 employers of my alumni?
- Which types of roles do our alumni excel in?
- In which sectors are our graduates dominant?
- How are our graduates different from those that attended other Universities?
Where does Asia Careers Group come in?
Asia Careers Group maintains a dataset with longitudinal career tracking data of returning Australian and UK graduates, but can provide this data for any Institution which recruits 800+ international students annually at any level, in Asia’s most important outbound markets (China, India & ASEAN.)
They make this available as a dashboard which allows you to benchmark the careers of your graduates against those of the graduates of other institutions.
How does this fit into the student recruitment process?
Insight into the career path of graduates can help student recruitment in almost all stages:
Strategy: Know yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses. If you know your graduates do will in certain sectors or roles, you can ‘double down’ on this throughout the entire students’ journey, from the early communication to the emphasis in programmes.
Attraction: Knowing where your graduates tend to end up will help you in making deliberate choices in where to look for your next batch of students. Be it through prioritising certain keywords or choosing to tell your story in certain media.
Education: Being able to provide credible stats and engaging, relevant case studies of graduates helps to paint a more complete picture of what it’s like being someone who has graduated from your institution. It also helps setting realistic expectations and attracting the right student profile.
Data & analytics: Of course, no single career path is 100% the outcome of someone’s University education alone. But by keeping track of a group of graduates and being able to benchmark them to other similar institutions, you’ll get insight into whether your programs ‘work’ for the people you’re trying to attract.
Know more?
Get in touch with Louise Nicol at Asia Careers Group!
