Director of Full-Time MBA Recruiting and Admissions

Rice University • Houston, TX

1d • $80,000 • Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Full-Time MBA Recruiting and Admissions serves as a strategic partner for Rice Business, a globally recognized graduate business school. This role is responsible for recruiting, admitting, and yielding future global business leaders for the Full-Time MBA program. The Director will design and implement the enrollment management strategy, lead the recruiting team, and actively participate in recruitment efforts. This position will co-lead the Admissions Committee (AdCom) with the Assistant Dean, making admissions decisions and engaging with internal and external stakeholders to achieve enrollment objectives. The Director will have critical oversight of the Full-Time MBA strategy and will collaborate with the Recruiting and Admissions Office (RAO) leadership to ensure synergy across operations, candidate experience, and enrollment management.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree (No substitutions permitted)
• Four or more (4+) years of higher education and/or relationship management/recruiting professional experience (In lieu of the experience requirement, additional related education above and beyond what is required may be substituted on an equivalent year-for-year basis.)
• Familiarity with the multiple work areas of a modern admissions office, including CRM systems, reporting and analytics, recruitment, candidate evaluation and selection, marketing, on-campus programming, staff training, budget management, and staff development
• Strong process and project management skills required. Proven ability to develop these skills in staff members so they can manage work areas independently with appropriate levels of management input
• Experience developing and implementing innovative solutions and processes to respond to the ever-changing field of admission
• Firm familiarity of graduate management education prospective student market
• Demonstrated ability to use admission and enrollment data to make data-driven decisions, measure and assess progress toward strategic goals, present data, and revise practices as needed
• Demonstrated ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and the ability to develop partnerships with key internal and external constituents and stakeholders
• Strong staff management skills
• Possess the ability to exercise independent judgment
• Excellent diplomacy and organizational skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills e.g. professionalism, collaboration etc.
• Expert ability to lead and facilitate presentations/information sessions with clarity and confidence
• Excellent computer skills, specifically Microsoft Suite, e.g., Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Nice To Haves

• Extensive professional experience in relationship management, either in enrollment management or sales
• Experience working within the graduate business education landscape or in higher education
• Experience supervising teams and professionally developing direct reports
• Familiarity working with CRM systems or equivalent to support relationship management responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Design, execute, and continuously refine the holistic Full-time MBA recruitment and evaluation strategy, establishing data-driven approaches for market expansion, travel plans, and targeted sourcing to achieve strategic enrollment targets.
• Serve as a core member of the RAO Senior Leadership Team and a trusted senior advisor to the Assistant Dean, providing actionable intelligence, risk assessments, high-touch relationship management, and strategic recommendations to drive full-time MBA enrollment targets.
• Exude high executive presence, authority, and confidence while representing Rice Business during high-stakes domestic/international travel, delivering high-impact recruitment presentations, and engaging elite candidate pools, corporate partners, and alumni networks.
• Serve as the chief strategist and executive steward of Full-Time MBA recruitment, owning the end-to-end candidate lifecycle, driving candidate sourcing, high-touch relationship management, and cohort yield strategy to meet target enrollment goals.
• Chair and lead the Full-Time Admissions Committee, serving as the primary final application reader and evaluator on cohort composition. Perform comprehensive and evidence-based evaluations of candidate application files by assessing qualitative factors to make formal recommendations for final admissions decisions.
• Provide final data-driven recommendations related to scholarship awards to the Assistant Dean.
• Direct, mentor, and build a high-performing Full-Time recruitment and admissions team, managing workload allocation for travel and candidate engagement while setting elevated standards to drive high-touch candidate conversion, establish outreach standards, and optimize workload distribution across file reading and evaluation workflows.
• Pioneer AI fluency and advance assessment technology to modernize candidate assessment practices, streamline applicant evaluation, and enhance data-driven selection frameworks across the recruitment lifecycle.
• Drive rigorous quantitative decision-making, predictive yield modeling, and absolute data integrity within the CRM (Slate), translating complex pipeline metrics into strategic updates for executive leadership.
• Own candidate conversion and melt-mitigation strategy, actively nurturing admitted students from decision release to matriculation through personalized, high-touch sales strategies.
• Collaborate in the oversight of macro yield, melt-mitigation, and retention operations, orchestrating high-impact events and targeted touchpoints to convert admitted candidates into enrolled cohorts.
• Manage unit resource allocation and budget spend across recruitment travel, external vendors, and candidate experience touchpoints to ensure maximum ROI on recruitment investments.
• Implement creative and innovative engagement strategies to maintain a robust candidate pipeline by establishing and maintaining strong relationships with prospective students through consistent and personalized communication frameworks and events, from inquiry to matriculation.
• Consistently collaborate with Rice Business stakeholders to ensure alignment exists between the product and brand and the recruiting and admissions strategy.
• Embody the highest standards of professionalism and operational excellence.
• Performs all other duties as assigned.
• Responsible for the Scholarship Matching process, to ensure all named/donor-funded scholarships are intentionally aligned with incoming students' best fit to support the purpose/intention of the award.
• Partner with Assistant Dean and RAO senior leaders to support elevated scholarship experiences aligned with the Rice Business community, such as Crownover and Sonnenberg, and any future scholarship experiences that are activated.
• Conduct evaluative interviews to curate a high-caliber, diverse MBA cohort that aligns with institutional standards and strategic enrollment goals as needed.
• Commit to continuous learning related to graduate management education trends and competitive market landscapes to leverage this knowledge to ensure Rice Business’s firm position within recruitment innovation.
• Represent Rice Business with key strategic partners, ensuring our efforts are aligned with the evolving needs of the global business workforce.

Benefits

• Rice University HR | Benefits: https://knowledgecafe.rice.edu/benefits
• Rice Mission and Values: Mission and Values | Rice University https://www.rice.edu/mission-values

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior