SAIT International Centre

My role as the International Student Recruitment Assistant helped develop a resourceful blend of skills in recruitment, marketing, governance, and brand engagement. The unique challenge I faced at SAIT were the changing, complicated regulations related to COVID-19.

Having an understanding of the Middle East and South Asian markets due to my upbringing, I worked directly with recruiters and agents from those regions and neighbouring ones. Two interesting projects I led were the Eurasian Student Success Stories and Virtual Campus Tour Study, resulting in improved audience visibility and engagement.

In the former, I interviewed four international students from the Eurasian region, detailing their experience from discovering SAIT to becoming a student and life nearing or after graduation. These stories were shared as promotional material to external sources and featured as articles on the institution website.

For the virtual tour study, I completed an elaborate, researched analysis of the exisiting tour compared to competiting schools. The goal was to introduce interactive elements such as campus directions, engaging holograms and info pop-ups targeted towards prospective and incoming international students.

My duties included:

• assisting in student advising and maintaining office environment.

• creation and execution of social media strategy and monthly calendar.

• acting as a representative of SAIT International Centre and student community on various platforms or local community.

• participating in recruitment fairs, consulting prospective students and promoting institution through testimonials including personal experience.

• acted as first point of contact for prospective and current students, responding to queries on the mailbox and at the front desk in the office.

• tailoring recruitment promotional materials to specific markets, conducting presentations and supporting the marketing coordinator.

• working closely with recruiters, educational agents, and various stakeholders across the SAIT community or departments.

• event logistics, hosting team-building activities and student support events or festivities.

SAIT Student Mentorship Program

During my time under the International Marketing Coordinator, I strategized using Instagram as a platform to share news about the return of students back to campus after COVID-19. For the student orientation, I curated the first-ever reel posted on SAIT International Centre's page which has received 6.3K views — their highest till date. Even though their current followers counts is under 3.5K, the reel succeeded due to its use of trending audio, exciting content, targeting "attention economy" along with other engagements methods like live video and audience interaction.

This was when the concept of reels was still newer. But, since I stayed up-to-date on trends in social media, I steered our strategy towards reels (as shown below) and influential content that directly resonated with our audience. I also introduced newer tools such as Hootsuite, Meta Business Manager, and Canva.

Below are more types of posts that I delivered during my responsibilities at SAIT.

Giving Back to Community

The opportunity to work at the SAIT International Centre felt like a celebration of my time as an international student. Because of the ongoing support of my peers, I was able to define a path of advocacy as a cheerleader of the skills and knowledge an immigrant brings to Canada.

I'm glad that I took on a role that supported and pushed for improvement of international students' lives. As a young and fresh graduate then, it helped set the foundation for a successful career in marketing, communications and public speaking.