Assistant Director, Graduate Studies

Nanyang Business School compete with top business schools from around the world to attract senior profesisonals from diverse backgrounds to join its graduate programmes. The key purpose of the role is to drive student outreach, recruitment and admission functions in order to bring in the best students to join our graduate programmes. This is key to the continuing success of all our programmes.

This role will be the lead for overall graduate studies’ content marketing, outreach campaigning, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) lead engagement, and maintenance. The Nanyang Fellows MBA is an exclusive full-time MBA programme designed for exceptional mid-career public sector leaders with the particular focus on ASEAN countries. The candidate will also be responsible for Nanyang Fellows MBA’s recruitment and admission, ensuring that the programme achieves its objectives in leads, applications, and enrollments.

Above and beyond the roles mentioned above, this role is required to oversee, drive and implement admissions for all graduate programmes within the Division.  The candidate will also work with stakeholders to forge close relationships with eventual students and alumni. The role will also support the general administration in the Graduate Studies Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions (MRA) Division.

This role reports to the Director of Graduate Studies and collaborates closely with the team members in Recruitment, Admissions and Corporate Communication & Marketing to achieve the MRA’s objectives.

Key responsibilities include but not limited to the following:

1. Strategic Marketing Plan development and implementation

• Develop dynamic marketing plans for various programmes to achieve recruitment objectives and maximize ROI impact on our marketing budgets. Marketing plans shall include recruitment activities in key markets that raise our brand awareness, programmes’ profile and increase our competitiveness.

• Ensure regular monitoring that we are on track and incorporate analysis to enable adjustments.

2. Marketing Performance Attribution and Marketing Analytics

• Track effectiveness of marketing campaigns across all programmes

• Manage marketing agency’s performance in terms of media buys in SEM, social media etc.

• Provide periodic marketing analytics report for management.

3. Overall graduate studies’ CRM lead database migration, enhancement and management

• Support migration of the CRM lead management platform.

• Define the needs of a CRM platform that facilitates the team to perform their role effectively and efficiently.

• Ensure team members are competent in using CRM tools effectively.

• Maintain all programmes’ lead database.

• Setup EDM (ad hoc / thematic) campaign automation to engage the leads.

• Develop performance dashboard reporting to enhance campaigns’ outcomes.

4. Nanyang Fellows (NF) MBA Student Recruitment

• Drive strategic initiative to focus on attracting exceptional public sector leaders in ASEAN countries to enroll in NF MBA.

• Develop B2B and B2G partnerships including corporate entities, universities, government agencies, trade associations etc.

• Promote NF programme awareness in Government Ministries and Agencies to recruit ASEAN scholars.

• Revamp NF programme branding to improve market positioning and penetration. Drive marketing outreach and campaigns for the programme.

5. Recruitment events management

• Identify and create appropriate events around the world, conduct, or supervise the planning and execution of these events to reach out to our target audience. Events could be in various formats, such as fairs, exhibitions, course previews, information session, webinars, coffee chats, yield events, organisation presentation etc.

• Setup KPIs: number of attendees, number. of leads, number of applications, ROI measures of events

6. Collaboration with NBS Corporate Communications

• Champion marketing communications initiatives for the purpose of promoting all Graduate Studies programmes, with a focus on assigned suite, and working with the marketing communications and corporate communications team as appropriate.

• Develop marketing collaterals that fulfill the needs of the recruitment team.

7. Strategic market insights and competitive analysis

• Provide strategic market insights, programme trends and directions based on market environments.

• Benchmark against competitive programmes and propose improvements to products and marketing.

• Oversee and manage relevant external and internal surveys to gain market insights and developing trends.

8. General Administration of Tracking and Reporting functions

• Support management reporting process to monitor progress in target achievements.

• Support budget planning and tracking of spending.

• Provide revenue forecast and tracking of revenue through collection of application fee and enrolment/tuition fees.

9. Collaborating with Stakeholders

• Leverage on alumni to improve programmes’ awareness by working with the support of the alumni department and the network. Drive referrals from alumni network.

• Collaborate with the bigger MRA team, Ops team, GSCDO, OA, One-Stop, HAS, faculty members and Finance team to ensure good participant experience with regards to pre-arrival, onboarding and matriculation. 

• Work with appointed agency and marketing communications team on leads generation strategies and tactics.

Key Competencies and Qualification Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree, preferably major in business management and marketing. Having an MBA is an added advantage

• Minimum 12 years of varied marketing, sales and/or admissions experience at the graduate level of which at least 6 years in supervisory role(s)

• Good experience in CRM lead database management and marketing using Hubspot

• Sound knowledge in marketing performance attribution and marketing analytics

• In-depth knowledge of the target markets

• Demonstrated track record in sales/leads generation

• Proven experience in analysing, implementing and redefining of processes and continuous enhancement of service levels

• High results and/or achievement orientation

• Good interpersonal, planning & organisational skills

• High level of integrity and credibility

• Attention to details

• Strong analytical skills and experienced in market research and surveys

• Experience in digital marketing and lead marketing campaigns

• Proven project management skills

• People-oriented and team player

• Demonstrated ability to manage across multiple projects and priorities

Hiring Institution: NTU