Recruitment and Retention Plan

As a recruitment and retention strategist for the Professional Writing program at Eastern Michigan University, I collaborated with seven other writers to develop a comprehensive plan that framed our proposed strategies for attracting and retaining more technical writing students. In addition to the strategic plan, we developed four strategy models intended to guide EMU faculty in establishing better practices for recruitment and retention. Our primary readers were Professional Writing faculty members from the Department of English Language & Literature responsible for increasing enrollments within their academic program and/or department. Key factors in the success of this project were understanding stakeholders, managing the project across multiple stages, and cultivating positive and productive team dynamics.

Early on, my team practiced empathy for stakeholders through activities such as stakeholder mapping, empathy mapping, and persona building. The personas helped us understand how multifaceted the issue might be and to avoid tunnel vision by considering only the “obvious” viewpoints of students and faculty members. At the draft stage, we created a video for the client school to demonstrate our evolving understanding of recruitment assets and challenges and welcome feedback. In this video, we pitched our ideas for developing a social media campaign, giving students a flash drive with infographics and a virtual tour, establishing a “Day in the Program” event, and building a mentorship initiative within the student organization. Lastly, we created the four strategy models culminating in a recruitment and retention plan.

Project Category: Usability Research

Deliverables: Stakeholder Map, Empathy Map, Personas, Client Pitch, Strategic Plan, Strategy Models

Client: Professional Writing at Eastern Michigan University

Timeline: January 2020–May 2020

Software: Adobe InDesign, Google Docs, Google Hangouts

Team Members: Imari Tetu (Team Leader), Abigail Burgess, Matisse Fernandez, Josh Maday, Hannah Mose, Aliese Rogers, Madison Taylor

Stakeholder Mapping

My team created stakeholder maps for multiple stakeholders in the recruitment equation. We represented our ideas with the atomic model, in which we listed the stakeholder’s abilities and knowledge in a cluster with offshoots to relevant connections. One of the most influential maps to our overall recruitment strategy was the stakeholder map for prospective students, which showed a huge gap between the talents that new or soon-to-be high school graduates have and the knowledge they need to be successful in the college search process. No wonder many feel inadequate or unprepared to engage in the work that current recruitment processes ask them to do. The atomic model also helped us understand stakeholder groups not only as individuals but as complex networks with other groups. If a school wants to recruit students, reps have to sell the program not only to them but to the people students turn to for advice and/or approval. This could include parents and families, high school teachers, academic advisors, and classmates, depending on whom the student trusts and to what extent.

We found that prospective students are connected with a wide range of stakeholders:

• fellow high school students,

• parents and family,

• high school teachers,

• college admissions,

• high school counselors,

• athletics / student organizations, and

• financial aid.

Empathy Mapping

My group used the stakeholder maps to develop empathy maps, which tended to be more concrete and categorized. Our empathy map on prospective students helped us work through what potential enrollees value, who influences their decisions, and to what extent those influences are positive or negative. Some of my team members who had not chosen a major until their second or third year at college reflected on the pressure of seeing friends apply and get accepted to their first-choice schools. Others reflected on hearing reactions to their future plans from academic advisors, friends, and family members. The process helped us understand 1) that few incoming students have a good mental map of the tech writing profession, as there is currently no place for it at the high school level, and 2) that many applicants feel a high degree of stress about college and the future in general.

We asked ourselves how we could play to the strengths of new students and help them reconcile their weaknesses with the admissions process. Or, more broadly, how do we design a recruitment process that shows empathy to them?

We found that prospective students had a variety of pain points with the recruitment process:

• pressure to choose the “right” school and major;

• disapproval of family, friends, teachers, or academic advisors;

• stress about affording college;

• potential rejection from first-choice schools;

• fears of academic failure; and

• fears of professional failure.

Personas

My team created personas for current and prospective students, faculty members, and admissions representatives. I was responsible within my group for the persona who belongs to EMU’s admissions team, a group we deemed significant in part because our contact had indicated that faculty members and admissions reps had worked at cross-purposes before. Persona building helped us overcome the tendency to view recruitment as a zero-sum game and to figure out how to work with rather than against potentially opposing or apathetic stakeholders.

We found multiple overlaps between the goals of faculty and the goals of admissions:

• for EMU’s enrollment to increase,

• for admissions to suggest study paths to prospective students,

• for faculty to facilitate the transition to EMU for incoming freshmen,

• for students to choose suitable academic programs, and

• for students to succeed.

Client Pitch

My team produced a video that demonstrated our ideas for more effective recruitment and retention and offered faculty members a preview of our strategic plan and strategy models. This

• provided us with an opportunity for feedback,

• allowed our clients to get a sense of what and how we thought about the problem(s), and

• ensured our models not only solved problems but solved the right problems.

Strategic Plan

We developed a comprehensive plan to frame our proposed strategies for attracting and retaining more technical writing students. Our recruitment guide includes four main sections.

1. Strategic Framework. The Strategic Framework section introduces our methodology for engaging with recruitment and retention in tech comm in general and for Professional Writing at EMU in particular.

2. Recruitment Assets. The Recruitment Assets section acknowledges current institutional and programmatic benefits that may be leveraged to grow the program in size or value.

3. Recruitment Challenges. The Recruitment Challenges section addresses likely threats to sustained or growing enrollment and foreshadows proactive measures to counter such threats.

4. Strategies & Initiatives. The Strategies & Initiatives section describes general best practices for recruitment (Strategies) and action plans for the short and long term (Initiatives).

Strategy Models

In addition to the strategic plan, we developed four strategy models intended to guide EMU faculty in establishing better practices for recruitment and retention. We considered the impact of each of these deliverables. 

1. Promotional Flash Drive. A flash drive with infographics and a virtual tour would familiarize prospective students with various career paths and avenues and give them a sense of the campus environment and resources.

2. Social Media Campaign. Social media content on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, including a group chat, would reach the age demographic of high school graduates and offer a platform for communication between faculty and prospective students.

3. “Day in the Program” Event. An exploration day for Professional Writing (instead of the University in general) would attract not only recent high school graduates but also internal transfer students, the category in which most technical writing majors fall nationally.

4. Student Organization. A mentorship initiative within the student organization would give incoming freshmen access to peer mentors and facilitate networking and friendships.

Thanks for reading!

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