Student Recruitment & External Engagement Manager

Job Purpose

The Student Recruitment and External Engagement Manager (SREEM) provides the lead professional services support for student recruitment and marketing, and external engagement.  The most significant area of delivery is support for the achievement of the school’s student in-take targets; the SREEM will ensure effective operationalisation of student recruitment, marketing, and conversion activity, and will lead the school’s admissions process in partnership with the School Director of Learning & Teaching and the University’s External Relations function. Using insight and analytics, the role-holder will inform the future shape of the School’s portfolio to support growth and raise the profile of the school. The other main area of delivery for the role is leadership of external engagement and business development opportunities, for the benefit of student experience, executive education, research, and internationalisation. This part of the portfolio includes leadership of professional services support for international partnership development, which generates benefits for student recruitment, student and staff experience, executive education, and research.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

1.  Work in partnership with the Director of Learning & Teaching, and other senior colleagues, on the development and effective implementation of the School’s Learning & Teaching student recruitment strategy with the specific focus on delivery of student recruitment targets.

2.  Key professional services lead working with colleagues across the School, College, and External Relations in delivery of the school’s postgraduate and undergraduate student recruitment intake targets. Responsible for ensuring the relevant student conversion plans are effectively operationalised and, as the owner of the student admissions process for the school, identify and implement key opportunities to improve both process efficiency and quality of decision-making.

3.  Work collaboratively with Development Director, Director of Internationalisation, and professional services colleagues to support the development of the external engagement across research expertise, student experience and professional development, aligning internal requirements with external needs. Identify good practice in fostering and enhancing engagement.

4.  Support the development of the School’s executive education offer, leveraging the business development team’s external networks. The post-holder will work closely with the School’s MBA and Executive Education Director and will act as the key interface with the College executive education function.

5.  To inform the University’s Income Growth Working Group the post-holder will hold responsibility in the provision of relevant analytical insight and trends analysis on the school’s portfolio tracking progress in delivery of sustainable student growth.

6.  As a senior contributor to the School’s Portfolio Review Group in assessment of the current Learning & Teaching portfolio, and the management of the programmes and courses approvals process, working with colleagues across the School, College, and External Relations to ensure the portfolio continues to be attractive to the student market and deliver the school’s strategic student growth objectives.

7.  Key professional services lead in identifying, with reference to Learning & Teaching, key opportunities to improve the school’s external rankings performance including competitor benchmarking and delivery towards the relevant University key performance indicators.

8.  Lead and develop a high performing professional services team to ensure the effective professional support within the functional areas of student recruitment and marketing, and external engagement.

9.  Senior contributor within the School’s Professional Services team in our ambition to deliver service excellence. The role-holder is a member of the School’s Professional Services Leadership Team, which has collective responsibility for leading the School’s professional services support. This role is also a member of other committees, including; College Admissions Committee, School Learning & Teaching Strategy Group, School Internationalisation Committee, and School Rankings Committee.

10.  Develop, with senior academic colleagues, external engagement opportunities to enhance the school’s reputation at local, national, and international levels; within this, a significant area will be supporting the development and maintenance of international partnership activity, which may benefit student recruitment, research, mobility, and / or executive and professional education.

11.  Deputise for the Head of Professional Services for the School as appropriate.

Knowledge, Qualifications, Skills and Experience

Knowledge/Qualifications

Essential:

A1 Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework level 9, 10 or 11 (Ordinary/Honours Degree, Post Graduate Qualification) or equivalent, including being professionally qualified in a relevant discipline, with a broad range of professional experience in a similar management role. Or Ability to demonstrate the competencies required to undertake the duties associated with this level of post having acquired the necessary professional knowledge and management skills in a similar or number of different specialist roles.

A2 Sound knowledge of the Higher Education sector with reference to student growth, partnership development and potential sector challenges.

A3 Knowledge of Lean/process improvement and project management.

A4 Knowledge of governance and business processes in a large complex organisation.

Desirable:

B1 A relevant post graduate degree Masters or PhD.

B2 Good knowledge of university funding and governance arrangements.

Skills

Essential:

C1 Excellent communications and presentational skills.

C2 Excellent interpersonal skills, particularly influencing, negotiation and diplomacy.

C3 Highly effective leadership skills as a strategic business partner working across organisational boundaries in successful delivery of strategic objectives.

C4 Proven track record of effective project management with the ability to manage several complex workstreams simultaneously and to timelines.

C5 Proven track record of business process improvement.

C6 Resilient and able to maintain momentum in the face of challenges and setbacks.

C7 Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a proven track record in the use of analytical insight to shape and influence business decisions.

C8 Excellent customer service, stakeholder management and business partnering skills.

C9 Ability to develop and implement operational plans to support strategic initiatives.

C10 Excellent ability to empower and motivate others to deliver a high-performance service culture in a participative manner.

Experience

Essential:

E1 Extensive and recent administrative management/leadership role in a large complex organisation.

E2 Extensive and recent experience in a business partner role working with senior staff to formulate, develop and implement strategic objectives.

E3 Extensive experience in the provision of analytical insight to inform high quality decision making.

E4 Proven track record in effective project management and process improvement.

Terms and Conditions

Salary will be Grade 8, £48,350 - £56,021 per annum.

This post is full time (35 hours per week) and open ended.

As part of Team UofG you will be a member of a world changing, inclusive community, which values ambition, excellence, integrity and curiosity.

As a valued member of our team, you can expect:

1 A warm welcoming and engaging organisational culture, where your talents are developed and nurtured, and success is celebrated and shared.

3 A flexible approach to working.

We believe that we can only reach our full potential through the talents of all. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our values. Applications are particularly welcome from across our communities and in particular people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented within the University. Read more on how the University promotes and embeds all aspects of equality and diversity within our community

https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/

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