When SUNY Jamestown Community College updated its customer relationship management system a year ago, Ashley Hinman embraced the opportunity to be the Admissions office expert with the new software.
“When we first got the system, I thought, ‘This is really cool. I’d like to learn as much as I can about it,’” she said. “I took every free training online about it.”
Hinman, an admissions specialist, was also hyper-focused during training sessions with a representative from Ellucian, a software company that provides the Recruit system that JCC uses to manage its relationships and interactions with incoming and potential students.
Her dedication to mastering Recruit was recognized when Ellucian invited Hinman to participate in a panel discussion titled “Sustaining the Effectiveness of Your CRM” during the company’s national conference March 26-29 in New Orleans.
in New Orleans.
Hinman joined panelists from the University of Winnipeg and the Colorado Community College System to discuss how they manage specific needs, system maintenance, and user adoption and training.
“There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that happens and has to be maintained on a daily basis,” Hinman said of the Recruit software. “We had a lot of questions from the audience for me because of the size of JCC. The other two panelists came from bigger schools. A lot of the audience are like us, working with less employees and having to do the same amount of work.”
“I got a lot of questions about how I maintain multiple parts of my job – being an admissions worker who answers phone calls and emails and also working with technology.”
A JCC graduate, Hinman began working in Admissions as a student in 2010 and earned full-time employment in the office in 2014.
She has excelled in managing Recruit and simplifying the system for fellow employees, leading to the added role of the Admissions office’s first communications/technology coordinator. With the new responsibility, Hinman works with JCC’s Management Information Systems team daily to ensure the college stays connected to prospective students.
Recruit also helps the college onboard students after they’ve applied and been accepted.
“One of the main themes of the conference was accelerating student success,” Hinman said. “Students have so many obstacles they are facing even before courses begin so it is important that we focus on how to streamline our processes and help eliminate confusion so they can be successful.”
Also managed by Recruit are JCC students in the Pre-college Enrollment Program and high school students who take summer courses covered by grant funding.
“That’s not common,” Hinman said. Referencing the panel discussion, she added: “We had a lot of questions about that. A lot of colleges want to do that, but they haven’t figured out exactly how. We had a lot of people reach out and we still are talking to people now.”
Hinman concluded that “JCC really is doing some cutting edge things in terms of Recruit, our applications, and the work we do with marketing. Many schools were blown away with the things we have been able to accomplish.”