Campus recruitment in a locked-down world
India is back at it. Lockdowns again, a devastating second wave with a third expected. How are educational institutions going to get new students on board?
The problem is twofold- firstly, with physical campuses being locked down there is no practical way schools, colleges and universities can allow students to come and get a look at them. The second issue is that with everyone going online, even recruiters are facing major problems showcasing their facilities and courses to potential candidates in a new and useful way.
We envision a space where both these needs are met. Where students can get an extensive tour of the campus and its facilities, and recruiters can get access to all the tools they need to effectively carry out their work.
Campus visits
The key issue is to give prospective students a good idea of the physical campus- usually this is done using photos and videos, but a 360 tour gives them a much better impression.
A lot of institutions have begun using Google Street View engine for this, which has the benefits of being integrated with Google services. But that's pretty much the only advantage it has, since it does not support annotations, rich media or integrated links.
In today's times, allowing prospective students and candidates to visit your campus virtually has immense benefits. It allows them to get a sense of the scale and facilities of your institution without actually having to go there.
It would also help if this virtual visit can be combined with infolinks, buttons and other media that give visitors clearer ideas of different sections and key areas of the campus.
Recruitment
We didn't really anticipate it, but the pandemic has led us to rethink campus recruiting. Some educational institutions have already begun to do this, but are facing problems shifting their existing recruitment systems online.
On-campus recruitment is already a tricky affair: expensive, time-consuming, logistically difficult and generally not very efficient. Even recruitment fairs require institutions to send their teams all over the country with physical flyers and other resources, to sit in makeshift kiosks all day with other similar reps. Why do it this way?
Post pandemic, all of this has shifted online of course. In fact, there was a healthy online component even before people had to stop physically gathering in large numbers. There is already a vast ecosystem of lead generations portals and consultants, online webinars and similar, plus institutions usually have their own admissions teams purchasing Google AdWords or joining aggregation sites as well as a robust social media presence.
With everyone shifting to 'virtual' formats though, institutions face the key learning that not everything translates well into the online medium, and that shifting recruiters and admissions committees into new mediums can often prove difficult.
One problem lies in the fact that there are now so many platforms that offer this kind of online recruitment, often with a whole lot of new things to learn to use. Even just figuring out which platform does what can take time in itself! A lot of these systems, being hastily developed for the purpose are often unintuitive with little to no support or guidance in their effective use.
So why 3D and XR?
One could argue that an XR platform would simply add to these problems. That instead of the standard online tools one would now need to learn some exotic craft like 3D modeling or coding or similar.
In fact, what an XR space offers is actually a massive reduction in complexity, easy to use one-click tools for recruiters as well as an immersive and memorable experience for students. It makes your institution stand out from the others who expect you to download an app or go through a complicated sign-up process just to get started.
XR spaces like these can be viewed directly over the web, on almost any device from desktop to mobile. They offer all the tools, links and media for both students and recruiters in one immersive space. Even better, they allow video calls directly within the space itself, so that the recruiter can guide the candidate toward the links most relevant to them. No learning is needed since they are incredibly intuitive.
It is easier for people to process 3D spaces than flat 2D, simply because they have been doing so since the dawn of history. People find it easier to navigate a space than process text and images.
Given the sophistication and usability WebXR spaces have evolved to (especially post COVID,) it makes sense for educational institutions to explore them in more detail and begin experimenting with what will work best for them and their admissions teams.
Our platform allows for both 360 guided campus tours as well as specialized admission and recruitment spaces linked to your own web presence. Give us a call soon to find out how!