You want a return on your investment: so does your prospective student (and their parents). Vocation means career. Career means a job. When marketing your school, the more you can promote the success of your career services and successful graduate stories, the more at ease people will be to enroll. You’re not only marketing education, your marketing what they can achieve afterwards.
You’ve already had to do all sorts of industry and job potential projects just to get your school approved to operate and for accreditation, so you’ve already done all the footwork required. Now you need to add that as a selling point to your marketing mix.
I wrote in an earlier post about career school marketing that you must balance the dream and the reality. This is in regards to truth in advertising, as well as to ensure your integrity as an institution. Following that “Dream v. Reality” balance rule holds true for job potential of your graduates. Depending on the particular vocation you teach, you MUST be open and straight forward about the job market, the competition, and the hard work required after graduation to be successful. If a student enrolls thinking that by attending your school they will magically have a job, then you’re not doing your job in informing that student. Never be afraid to be honest. You’ll find that students will respect you more, respect themselves more while studying, and will be all around better students if they have a clear and realistic picture of what they need to do to be successful after they graduate.
So make the job discussion an integral part of your open houses, your course catalog and brochures. Have special information sessions dedicated just for parents (during which their children are not present, even) so that you can have open and frank discussions with them and can address their concerns.
The more you talk about post-graduation realities and careers, the more they will see you as an authority in the industry. If you avoid these discussions, then it seems not only “shady” but you also lose the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise in the industry. Most of your prospective students will be touring other career / vocational schools, which means they are COMPARING your authority against all the others, so take that chance to show how much better your school and programs are. Give not only facts and figures, but describe the lifestyle, the growth potential, and allow your instructors to participate so that they can also share their experience in the industry and what it took for them to have a successful career.
Talking opening and realistically about job potential is an opportunity for greatness. Far too many schools shy away from it in this hard job market, which is the exact opposite thing you ought to do. Be bold. Be honest. Your school will always be better for it.
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