2006 Campus Technology Innovators: eRecruitment
TECHNOLOGY AREA: eRECRUITMENT
Innovator: Ryerson University
Challenge Met
With more and more prospective students
and applicants using the web to obtain information
about a university, making eRecruitment
as efficient and effective as possible is
a top priority at Ryerson University (ON).
Specifically, the Toronto-based university,
with 21,000 full-time students and a nearly
$200 million (US dollars) capital expansion
in the works, wanted to increase the
level of personalized attention to interested
students, and to streamline its recruitment
practices in the process.
Ryerson joined with two vendor partners
whose products the university was already
using to spearhead a software integration
that is revolutionizing the recruitment
management process at the school. The solution
combines the Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) capabilities of Azorus’s
suite of eRecruitment software with knowledge management capabilities
from IntelliResponse. By harnessing the two tools,
the university can seamlessly learn more
about individual applicants and their interests
as they access links and ask questions
throughout the Ryerson portal. Armed with
this knowledge—a virtual record of the student’s
footprints throughout the dynamic
environment—the school can automatically
respond with immediate, relevant content tailored
to the student’s interests.
The integration allows Ryerson to collect
“an immeasurable amount of market intelligence
on prospective students,” according
to Susan Vercruysse, assistant registrar of
student recruitment and communications,
and liaison, Office of Undergraduate Admissions/
Liaison. “Information can be gleaned
on both the macro and micro levels, from a
systemwide basis down to individual students.”
By automating interactions, the
new solution also allows the Admissions/
Liaison office to satisfy requests for information
about Ryerson much more quickly
and efficiently.
How They Did It
The seed for the innovative approach g'es
back to Ryerson’s initial decision to purchase
solutions from both Azorus and IntelliResponse. “The collaboration was
something we thought about when we first
started to look at each product,” says Vercruysse.
The university launched both applications
in September 2005; work on the
knowledge management integration began
in March 2006.
In order to communicate and coordinate
what was needed, Vercruysse and others at
Ryerson worked with both vendors, along with
stakeholders at the university who would be
impacted by the solution. “I told them what
we would like to see; what would make a
powerful tool and would help us do our jobs,”
Vercruysse says,“then put it into the hands of
the technical folks on both sides.”
Next Steps
In its collaboration with Azorus, the university
is also launching an experiment with
another innovative recruiting tool called
Digital Ink. The handwriting recognition
solution will allow prospective students to
use a digital pen to complete a special
paper-based form, and have that data
immediately entered into the Azorus database.
According to Vercruysse, Digital Ink
may significantly enhance Ryerson’s frontline
recruitment efforts by further automating
data collection by liaison staff at job
fairs and other on-the-road situations.
The Digital Ink field trial will be completed
this fall, and prospective Ryerson students
for fall 2007 will get the full benefit of
the integration project—a dynamic personal
experience tailored to each student’s
unique interests and inquiries.
Advice
One unexpected byproduct of the new system
is a significant drop in run-of-the mill
e-mail inquiries, indicating that students
are finding the answers they need on the
site. That has freed human resource staff for
other projects. But,Vercruyesse notes, while
tools like Digital Ink will provide a powerful
new way to collect recruitment data, they
won’t fully replace the need for traditional
hard-copy request cards or access to computers
at large-scale events that draw tens
of thousands of prospective students.