The Role and Department

The Role - What will you be doing?

The Undergraduate Student Recruitment and Conversion Manager is responsible for the leadership and management of a small team delivering high quality, strategically aligned, flag ship events to undergraduate prospects, applicants and offer holders on behalf of the University. Using a best practice and a continuous improvement approach they have responsibility for the operational planning and delivery of a minimum of four large scale University-wide Open Days, at least three sizeable Offer Holder Days, regular Discover Durham Tours and a range of digital events that complement on-site delivery.

Using initiative, interpersonal and collaboration skills they use independent judgement and technical skills to deliver and develop events that match the changing strategic needs of recruitment and conversion across the student journey. The Undergraduate Student Recruitment and Conversion Manager needs to deliver a culture of continuous improvement to ensure activity is engaging and targeted to meet the needs of prospective students and key stakeholders/influencers. The successful candidate will be responsible for working with the Head of Service and Deputy Head of Service, and the Postgraduate Student Recruitment and Conversion Manager to create and deliver a strategy which will strengthen Durham's reputation by showcasing key selling points of the University.

The Undergraduate Student Recruitment and Conversion Manager works collaboratively with colleagues across Recruitment (including Widening Access and Participation teams) and Admissions and with internal stakeholders such as academic departments, professional support services, colleges, wider student experience teams, Durham Student Union, Colleges JCR members, estates and facilities, and current students working as Durham Student Ambassadors. This collaborative approach ensures events and activities deliver a holistic representation of the University to participants. In addition, they work with external stakeholders to ensure collaborative working throughout Durham City (e.g. Durham County Council and the train station), so strong networking and influencing skills, along with the ability to successfully plan, manage a large delivery team and deliver large scale events (up to 10,000 participants), are key to success in this role.

The Undergraduate Recruitment and Conversion Manager needs to maintain an up-to-date knowledge of sector wide good practice and developments; using this to continuously develop service provision and improve outcomes, throughout the student journey to enrolment at Durham. They also monitor and evaluate delivery, with a focus on increasing the impact of activity in relation to rates of progression to Durham University specifically.

For large scale event delivery, the post holder manages a team of staff from all levels, from across the Department and the wider University. The role also requires the management and training of up to 400 Open Day Student Ambassadors, and the line management of co-ordinator of the Durham Student Ambassador scheme which sees around 100 DSA working across a wide variety of events including residential summer schools, UCAS fairs, School Visits and Enquiries annually.

Adherence to Health and Safety and Safeguarding regulations and University Policies is a necessary element of this post.