Colleges of pharmacy nationwide are experiencing challenges in recruiting quality pharmacy student candidates. CORE RECRUIT offers a customizable platform to engage and inspire prospective students to pursue a pharmacy degree while also attracting program applicants. A detailed reporting suite allows schools to capture and export insights.

THE CHALLENGE

Colleges of pharmacy nationwide are experiencing challenges in recruiting quality pharmacy student candidates.

Individual colleges of pharmacy promote the benefits of their particular program and university extremely well, however, long-term success requires increasing the overall candidate pool size vs. competing with other programs over a continuously declining pool size. To accomplish this, more high school and undergraduate students must discover pharmacy as a career choice, be introduced to the various career settings (beyond community), and get inspired to choose pharmacy over the other health science programs available to them.

THE PROCESS AND SOLUTION

High school and undergraduate student candidates generally have a limited understanding of what they can do with a PharmD. To remedy this, in 2020, CORE
Higher Education Group launched RECRUIT, a digital platform designed to help individual colleges of pharmacy engage, educate, and excite potential student
candidates about the various practice settings and career paths pharmacy has to offer.

CORE RECRUIT is a gated content platform designed to deliver engaging and pharmacy-specific activities to prospective pharmacy students while capturing
actionable data on those individuals. The platform is fully customizable to the college of pharmacy allowing for a unique student experience while also providing a detailed reporting suite allowing schools to capture and export insights.

"At the end of the trial, we had 31 unique prospective student candidates to connect with,
stay in touch with, and follow if they decide to pursue our program.” shared Lara Gomez.

To prove the concept through beta testing, CORE offered three pharmacy programs the opportunity to take advantage of RECRUIT as a part of a four-month trial program:

• The University of Hawaii Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy
• The University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy
• The University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy

The RECRUIT team designed a custom “Pharmacy Exploration Center” for each program and developed a marketing plan tailored to the recruiting strategy and
resources available to each program. These colleges of pharmacy promoted their individual Pharmacy Exploration Centers through their websites, social media, mass email, and newsletters.

THE RESULTS

Throughout the four-month trial, each college of pharmacy experienced success, and all three programs have decided to continue using CORE RECRUIT to support their individual recruiting strategies.

The University of Hawaii Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy leveraged their social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn) to engage prospective PharmD students with their Pharmacy Exploration Center. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Lara Gomez, PharmD said “The University of Hawaii DKICP Pharmacy Exploration Center provides valuable information to prospective students about the different fields available in pharmacy. The CORE RECRUIT platform helped us gather prospective students’ information. At the end of the trial, we had 31 unique prospective student candidates to connect with, stay in touch with, and follow if they decide to pursue our program.”

"The platform is very helpful for students who want to know what certain jobs entail or learn
the various paths graduates can take with a pharmacy degree," said Claire Burbridge, P2 pharmacy student.

The University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy focused on unique content production with an emphasis on alumni career path interviews. “Our alumni represent valuable resources to mentor, educate, and connect with our students in many ways. This platform will be valuable for prospective students, but also support our current students and introduce them to additional career paths and professional relationships. I’ve been able to use this personally as a tool to share with prospective and current students. We can also see the logins increase coinciding with events and when we promote it.” said Erica Estus, PharmD, BCGP Clinical Professor, Chair of Admissions Committee, URI College of Pharmacy. Claire Burbridge, current P2 pharmacy student mentioned, “The platform is very helpful for students who want to know what certain jobs entail or learn the various paths graduates can take with a pharmacy degree. Being able to see the URI alumni and where they work is great to know that different jobs are possible upon graduation.” Dean E. Paul Larrat, PhD from the University of Rhode Island stated, “We are pleased to collaborate with CORE Higher Education Group on this exciting project that exposes students to the wide spectrum of opportunities offered by study toward a pharmacy degree.”

The University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy took full advantage of the pharmacy career content offered within the platform. Olivia Buncher, M.A., Director
of Admissions stated, “The Pharmacy Exploration Center is a tactic for one of the primary goals in our recruiting strategy, which is to provide prospective students and influencers (such as guidance counselors and advisors) with robust information about pharmacy careers. We already use CORE for our experiential education program but we have limited resources to develop our own pharmacy career materials. We have a small communications team that would not have the time to develop polished materials for us to use. We have received good feedback from prospective students that they like the general concept and that we have a way for them to perform self directed pharmacy career exploration.”

THE CONCLUSION

In conclusion, colleges of pharmacy now have a solution to help high school and undergraduate students discover pharmacy as a career choice, be introduced to the various career settings (beyond community), and get inspired to choose pharmacy over the other health science programs available to them.