The Zinch That Stole Recruiting
- By Katherine Grayson
- 05/01/08
Web 2.0 recruitment technology is already out there for
you; just keep your eyes open and build a plan.
The advent of Web 2.0 has
changed the face of campus
recruiting: Social networking,
YouTube, blogging,
and forums have turned out to be a campus
recruiter’s dream-that is, a highly
visionary, innovative, methodical, and
organized campus recruiter’s dream.
Take Butler University (IN) Electronic
Communication Coordinator
Brad Ward, highlighted in "Social Networking:
The New Face of Recruiting"
(IT Trends eNewsletter; March 6, 2008). Ward is a 24-year-old not long
out of college himself, who admits he
wracks his brain daily to think of new
ways to connect a nation of student
prospects to his school. A while ago,
Ward enlisted a team of Butler students
to blog weekly and give the university’s
site visitors an idea of what it’s really
like to be at Butler. He’s even placed
ads and set up fan pages on Facebook, and proactively
searched there for Butler’s incoming
freshman class so that the Butler
bloggers could make sure enrollees
received peer guidance regarding misperceptions
about student life. And in
an inspired move, he equipped the
bloggers with webcams and sent them
out to uncover behind-the-scenes campus
life, and then share those videos on
YouTube. (YouTube favorites: an insider’s
tour of a campus sorority house,
and an interview with Remember the
Titans Coach Boone.)
Then, in mid-2007 , Ward discovered
the beta site of Zinch ("College admissions is now a zinch"),
the brainchild of two Princeton (NJ)
undergrads and a Brigham Young (UT)
undergrad and alum, all who recall their
own frustrations with the college selection
process. In a nutshell, students
place their profiles on Zinch (with an
emphasis on the non-transcript stuff
that schools try so hard to uncover for
best matching), and the colleges
search for them, rather than vice-versa.
Employed as a complement to a student’s
traditional college search, Zinch
expands a student prospect’s exposure
in ways not possible before. Importantly,
it also allows a school to search for
its ideal student body. Ward says his
team routinely jumps onto Zinch to drill
down by state, graduating class, gender,
and more. He adds that messages
sent to groups on Zinch yield a 35 percent
"open" rate, meaning a much higher
percentage of kids open messages
on Zinch, versus e-mail blasts. To date,
the website boasts 300,000 student
members and 519 member schools.
Head to Zinch to find out more about
how this Web 2.0 networking site can
enhance your own institution’s recruiting
efforts. And to stay on top of many
more new Web 2.0 opportunities that
can transform your college or university,
don’t miss Campus Technology
2008, "Welcome to Next-Gen.Edu!" in
Boston, July 28-31. We’ll see you
there!
-Katherine Grayson, Editor-In-Chief
What have you seen and heard? Send to: [email protected].
About the Author
Katherine Grayson is is a Los Angeles based freelance writer covering technology,
education, and business issues.