How ApplyBoard Vets and Builds Strong Relationships with Recruitment Partners

At ApplyBoard, our mission to educate the world is the backbone of everything we do. It underpins our conversations with partner institutions, our product innovations, and of course, the guidance we provide students. Since 2015, we’ve helped more than 600,000 students from over 150 countries pursue an education at one of our 1,750+ partner institutions.

None of this would be possible without our network of qualified recruitment partners (RPs).

ApplyBoard’s diverse network of RPs, who are stationed across 110 countries, plays a key role in helping our partner institutions recruit the brightest students from around the world. As these students and institutions place their trust in us, it’s critical that ApplyBoard carefully vets RPs, conducts regular audits, and ensures every member of our network meets our quality standards.

Strengthening the Sector

As part of our Strengthening the Sector series, we’ll be exploring the many different ways that ApplyBoard pushes the international education sector forward. 

In this first deep dive, we’ll be exploring how recruiters become ApplyBoard partners, and how they need to undergo a strict vetting process before they’re granted access to our platform. 

Read the other articles in this series as they’re published:

• Ongoing Performance Monitoring
• Sector Training
• Application Pre-Screening
• Document Authentication
• Study Permit Approval Advantage

Protecting the Quality of Our Network

As the needs of international students evolve, so do the requirements we set for our recruitment partners. It’s critical that we find the right partners who can mentor and guide our students throughout their application process.

At ApplyBoard, we don’t just work with traditional recruitment agencies. Our network of RPs includes counsellors, secondary institutions, and experienced immigration consultants. We’re all international education stakeholders, working together to serve the brightest students from around the world. 

Despite the size of our network, we’re selective about who we partner with to ensure no bad actors gain access to our platform. We understand that some agents out there have been known to ignore best recruitment practices, or give students bad advice—so our vetting process safeguards our platform, our users, and our partner institutions against these unscrupulous individuals. 

ApplyBoard’s RP vetting process ultimately filters out around 30% of the businesses that approach us about partnering.

We lean on a host of data points and specific checks to help us assess the fit of potential partners. And to ensure consistent quality, we continuously evolve our vetting process, tailoring it for different geographic areas. This way, partner institutions can be certain their campuses and programs are being represented to students effectively.

Digital Identity Verification

Additionally, ApplyBoard leads the sector by enforcing mandatory digital identity verification, which uses photo ID and liveness checks to verify the authenticity of everyone who joins our recruitment partner network. 

Biometric liveness detection uses a variety of detection algorithms to ensure the face being presented belongs to a live human being and not a fake. To achieve this, we’re partnering with industry-leading identity proofing and risk assessment tool Jumio. 

In addition to its vital data security benefits, identity verification ensures trust, transparency, and accountability as a key compliance measure within our network.

ApplyBoard’s RP Vetting Process

From start to finish, here’s an overview of our vetting process:

ApplyBoard reviews everything; not just professional documents, but anything we can find. We check to make sure the applicant is certified, that they aren’t on our blocklist, and that they have a good public reputation. We even check their website and social media to evaluate for professionalism.

What Our Partner Institutions Have to Say

ApplyBoard’s commitment to working with the best recruitment partners, and providing the highest quality of service, is critical to driving success for our institutional partners. 

Here’s what a couple of our partners had to say about the importance of quality and consistency when it comes to working with recruitment partners:

“When you ask representatives from international recruitment offices to evaluate the success (or not) of their various recruitment channels—agents and recruitment partners, institutional partnerships, etc.—most simply default to a cursory assessment of success as defined by student numbers. Others add another layer and look at conversion rates.

“Now, if I consider these two metrics, ApplyBoard performs very well. Overall student numbers have been strong and, as mentioned before, conversion rates are exceptional. At the University of the Fraser Valley, we’ve added a few additional metrics to try and get a better picture of how these various recruitment channels are performing.

“Those are (1) the average GPA of students sent during a particular period, and (2) the percentage of students on (or not on) academic warning. This gives a much fuller picture of the quality of a recruitment partner. And this is where ApplyBoard shines. They are the only partner to excel in all four metrics.”

“Students from ApplyBoard are well informed about the program they’ve applied to and are committed to their studies. They’ve usually been provided with realistic information about our campuses and communities. ApplyBoard has helped us increase overall international numbers, as well as the diversity of our international students.”

Ongoing Monitoring

ApplyBoard’s initial vetting process is where accountability starts, but not where it ends. Once an individual or organization joins our RP network, they’re monitored on an ongoing basis to ensure they continue to comply with ApplyBoard’s quality standards. 

How exactly does that ongoing monitoring work? We’ll break it down in our next Strengthening the Sector feature. As the international education sector evolves, defining these processes is more important than ever, for the sake of trust, transparency, and accountability. 

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About the ApplyInsights Team

FOOTNOTES:

1. All data courtesy of ApplyBoard unless otherwise stated.