Director Of Admissions

LCCA is a contemporary institution, offering a range of programmes. Our students embark on a journey which is designed to meet their academic and personal demands. At the very heart of our vision is a student-centred learning and teaching methodology which is progressive, forward-thinking, modern, and designed to meet our learners’ needs.

Our academic team consists of modern, progressive, professionals who have what it takes to motivate students from a variety of backgrounds, to inspire belief in students who are striving for professional and personal recognition and to drive students towards successful lives.

• Reporting to the Deputy Managing Director, this is a strategic and tactical leadership role within the wider marketing, recruitment and communications team.
• The role is responsible for the successful processing of the College’s recruitment targets.
• This is a dynamic, agile and high-quality service requiring an expert admissions leader responsible for supporting the admissions processes of all the College campuses within the UK and potentially out with the UK in future.
• A strategic thinker and doer, with strong operational acumen is essential to drive an analytical and insight-led approach to admissions strategy and performance. This includes creating a clear admissions strategy, dynamically linked with the College’s targets of widening access and participation.
• A natural can-do approach with highly developed people and project management skills are essential.
• The role holder will work with senior level colleagues internally, and network with a wider range of external partners and stakeholders to ensure admissions strategies are clearly communicated and managed to high standards of quality and integrity.
• The role holder should be highly conversant with HE sectors data, context and insights to drive developments in our portfolio and positioning.
• Being able to co-ordinate complex markets and services across concurrent cycles, and ensure the teams are focused on achieving targets is crucial to the Colleges’ performance.

The Director of Admissions is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the primary admissions activities of the College.

The post holder will ensure:

• Strategy and Performance - devising and implementing a clear admissions strategy to underpin the delivery of annual recruitment targets
• Quality and Delivery - ensuring the effective running of the College’s admissions, function and the associated processes and teams, managing risk and performance.
• Process Management - devise and oversee primary levers of process including application management, offer strategy, service and turnaround standards
• Institutional Lead - expert advice to a wide range of stakeholders on all matters relating to admissions strategy and processes.
• Financial Management - reviewing and approving all admissions team and process plans, ensuring an acceptable return on investment within budget and process limits.

Admissions Strategy & Performance

• Devising and implementing an admissions strategy for LCCA ensuring the College achieves its overall recruitment objectives whilst supporting engagement and brand building goals for the institution.
• Balancing admissions risks for the institution, ensuring the admissions service is adequately managed against a range of regulatory risks factors.
• Ensuring the College remains competitively positioned both from an admissions strategy perspective for entry standards, and against a range of local and national competitors.

Admissions Quality and Delivery

• Ensuring the effective running of LCCA’s admissions functions and processes which fall within the remit of the college infrastructure.
• Overseeing the admissions lifecycle and student journey from application, through to offer management and conversion to enrolment.
• Building and leading a high-performing admissions team, who act as the institution’s centre of expertise for admissions processes and procedures.
• Working closely with colleagues outside of the direct reporting structure to ensure overlapping or dependent services support the Colleges admissions and recruitment objectives.

Admissions Process Management

• Devise and oversee clear KPIs and SLAs for admissions performance, working with senior colleagues with the team and across the College to drive consistent improvement in standards and performance.

Institutional Lead on Admissions

• Providing expert advice to a wide range of stakeholders on matters relating to admissions and policies.
• Ensuring compliance to all regulatory requirements in relation to LCCAs admissions function e.g., UCAS, OfS, CMA, GDPR etc. and to develop and maintain appropriate admissions strategies which are fair and transparent.
• Oversight and management of all legal agreements with companies and organisations involved in the admissions services space, including UCAS and 3 party service organisations.
• Chairing / co-chairing a range of meetings and/or committees as required.
• Collaborating with senior colleagues to inform relevant government consultations on matters relating to admissions processes and standards and planning ahead to incorporate process changes in core markets and portfolios.
• Development of professional admissions networks to support ongoing development of the admissions service.

Admissions Financial Management

• Managing budgets related to admissions activities including the operational admissions budgets, and co-invested budgets for admissions performance.
• Ensuring core processes which support admissions are adequately resourced for current and future needs, strategically planning to align service standards and capacity to meet financial growth targets.

Additional responsibilities

• Engage in continuous personal and professional development in line with the demands of the role, including undertaking relevant training and development activities to develop themselves and support the development of others.
• Ensure and promote the personal health, safety and wellbeing of staff and students.
• Carry out duties in a way which promotes fairness in all matters, and which engenders trust.
• Promote equality of opportunity and support diversity and inclusion as well as working to support the College’s environmental sustainability agenda and practices.
• The role requires attending meetings and networking events outside of normal working hours as well as national travel to events.

• Ideally 3 years senior admissions manager / director experience
• Detailed knowledge and experience of the admissions process for student recruitment markets.
• Broad experience of student recruitment markets and trends (both HE and non-HE).
• Experience of working at a senior level in admissions, as part of a wider student recruitment / marketing and admissions function within a HE environment.
• Experience of motivating and leading high-performing, target-driven teams.
• Experience of successfully managing a wide range of senior stakeholders within an HE environment.
• Experience of managing a process infrastructure and associated performance stages.
• Experience of devising and implementing admissions strategies for multiple markets in a HE environment.
• Experience of managing large teams / budgets and delivering to ROI objectives.
• Experience of implementing large and complex process or service improvement projects.
• Experience of leading distributed teams in multiple markets.
• Experience of risk-management (both commercial and people) in HE environments.
• A detailed understanding of educations systems in core recruitment markets and how these feed into competitive advantage.

Knowledge & Skills

• Ability to communicate with authority and clarity to a broad range of stakeholders (both internal and external) across at multiple levels of an organisation from Vice-Chancellor / CEO & Executive, directly with customers (students, agents, partners etc).
• Have a high degree of analytical and data interpretation skills, processing and synthesising large data sets, quantitative and qualitative market intelligence reports.
• Have a strategic mindset with a proven track record of devising and implementing successful admissions strategies.
• Ability to lead an operational business unit at institutional / organisational level.
• Ability to develop innovative solutions to complex and changeable problems in a fast-paced market-driven environment.
• A broad understanding of a range of legislation which impacts on higher education admissions, recruitment and marketing, including UCAS, OfS, GDPR compliance etc.