Arnaud Catinot and the art of digital recruitment is the very first interview by Monsuni.

After running an incubator and a cluster of higher education institutions, Arnaud Catinot launched HigherEdMe in 2015, willing to use the latest dating app technologies in the international education field.

The first platform higheredme.co has been released in 2016, it attracted more than 67.000 candidates, 500 HEIs and reached 30.000 matches.

 

Monsuni: Arnoud, thanks for having accepted Monsuni’s request for the interview. To start, how the health of the recruitment market today in your opinion?

 

AC: It has been very difficult for most organizations, that had to cope with a travel ban and the economic impact of not having international students on campus.

The ones that had more than 15% of their budget based on international student revenues were really at risk and we saw the first closings recently, at least downsizing the teams.

The impact is also on providers that rely on students presence: travel, housing, books,… and we don’t talk much about them.

However, when a black swan-like this happens, it is “shaking the tree” so hard that strategy comes back at the centre of the table. It is a perfect time to rethink its assets, goals, singularities, dependencies, strengths and weaknesses. It had an undeniable and massive impact on digital transformation. Some remote learning operators exploded their KPIs, pure onsite players who could not adapt fast enough suffered a lot.

 

Monsuni: It looks like online recruitment is getting more and more important. An important fair provider, FPP, has 100% moved online. What is your take on this trend?

 

AC: When your major turnover is based on physical presence and you can’t deliver, you have to find solutions. They did. The question is how can you create a high-quality experience for your users and generate satisfaction in such a short time.

I think FPP has created a matching platform for years now, and they surely used this experience to succeed. What I’ve noticed on the market is “traditional” media players creating a partnership with digital matching operators, to widen their offers to their community.

 

Monsuni: Also, portals are growing in importance. Your own, HigherEdMe, has just undergone some major refurbishment. Can you tell us more about this?

 

AC: Yes, we decided on two majors moves: the first move was to change our technology from hard coding to no-code, to reduce technical costs and lower our pricing, and shrink the delay between ideas/needs and implementation.

The second move was to add two new roles in the system: agents and service providers. So we act as a global education freemium marketplace with way more services. For example, a recruitment officer can post programs, contact pending candidates, find agents, find partners, find teammates, publish anonymous expertise request, use the internal job board, publish PhD positions, we are even starting a micro influencing platform.

 

Monsuni: so what’s your take for the near future?

 

For the next 2-3 years I am more optimistic. I think international educators will see an unprecedented rise as soon as international travel will be back on track, as a reaction to confinement.

It’s time to get ready for a study abroad a golden period.

 

Check out the new version of HigherEdMe here!