Role: Domestic Student Recruitment Officer
Company: Queens University
Track Record:
ME AND MY JOB
What does your job entail?
My job is a marketing and customer care based role within the domestic student recruitment team.
We work with colleagues across Queen’s to ensure that courses are packaged and marketed to our target audience.
The domestic team is responsible for the Ireland and GB markets. We deliver school presentations as well as produce campaigns, publications and exhibition events.
We aim to ensure that students from all backgrounds are aware of the opportunities that exist at Queen’s so they can make an informed choice and are aware of what is included in the exceptional Queen’s student experience.
Is it 9-5?
No, definitely not. The team travels extensively throughout GB and all of Ireland and very often this can include evening events in schools or exhibition venues. Early morning flights are par for the course as are late nights.
As we are on the road a lot, personal time can be eaten into by admin based work.This job demands flexibility on many levels and that’s why it’s so important to be part of a hard working and supportive team.
How did you get into this line of work?
I have worked in a number of PR/sales and marketing roles since leaving university. The most recent of which was marketing manager of Belfast Festival at Queen’s.
Whilst working there, a new marketing and recruitment directorate was set up within the university, which included the areas of international and domestic student recruitment. I was lucky enough to get a job within the domestic team.
Tell us about your qualifications/training.
I graduated from Queen’s with a BSc in information and business management and completed the Premiere Graduate Management Programme where I specialised in marketing. I later joined the Chartered Institute of Marketing and obtained a CIM diploma.
Outline your career to date?
As a student I worked in the hospitality industry and set up kids’ sports summer camps.
I completed a placement with an advertising agency and after graduating I worked in various PR and marketing roles before moving to my present role at Queen’s University.
What qualities are required for your job – personal and professional?
Interpersonal skills are extremely important as I am communicating daily with very different groups of people. The ability to communicate on many levels and through various mediums is therefore very important.
Professionally I suppose it’s about being able to recognise which communication method is best and at which time, during the student cycle.
The higher education market has never been more competitive, so being creative and thinking that little bit differently is always a requirement.
I’m very lucky to be part of a small but highly skilled team who depend greatly on each other. You have to be a team player in Queen’s as we all contribute towards the student experience.
What are the biggest challenges and rewards of your work?
The challenges are exploring and developing new markets to encourage more students to come to Queen’s. It is very important as a university that we have a diverse student population and we have made considerable progress in achieving this over recent years.
Queen’s has a tremendous story to tell prospective students so it is about identifying the most effective platforms to address these new audiences.
The rewards in the job are endless: to engage with great young people and, as a result of this engagement, to see them becoming a student at Queen’s is a privilege and very rewarding.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I am a frustrated and injury prone sports-man so to avoid injuries I have turned my attention to coaching in recent times.
I also manage the Queen’s Sigerson Team which is time consuming but working with such talented people is very rewarding.
I am also entering my final year of a three year part-time MSc in sports psychology.
Above all, I love spending time with my wife Pippa and 18-month-old daughter Molly as well as getting home to Donegal as often as I can.
Tell us an interesting fact about yourself.
I once broke the Donegal schools’ long jump record.
Who has inspired you most in your life?
I have been very fortunate to have learned from and been inspired by some of the very best but in terms of my career, I would have to highlight a man called Albert Titterington.
Albert was a tutor of mine at Queen’s and his lectures and seminars were a joy. I loved how he thought and viewed various scenarios. Everything seemed possible when talking to him and he was the first person whom I heard say ‘the only disability is a bad attitude’.
I still remember some of his lectures to this day and that is over 13 years ago now. He is one of the most positive and charismatic people I have ever met and he was the reason I first wanted to get into marketing.