Prior to the global pandemic, Vietnam was a target market for international admissions officials looking to diversify their student bodies<\/a>. But, in 2020\u2013like it or not\u2013school recruiters were forced to swap their long haul flights for Zoom calls and kiss their United Airlines 1K statuses a sad goodbye<\/a>. Grounded. Deskbound. Call it what you will, but the music had finally stopped on the jet set world of overseas student recruitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There has been real pain: revenue losses from lower international enrollment have reduced entire admissions departments to skeleton crews<\/a>. Other programs, especially short-term intensive English courses, have disappeared completely. Few universities thought the party would ever end, and even fewer took steps to insure themselves against potential losses from an enrollment drop<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The decade between 2009-2019 was, for many, a cocktail-in-hand ride around the world on recruitment tours that increasingly blurred the lines between exotic vacations and actual business travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourdozen is a digital marketing company in Vietnam with deep roots in student recruitment. The pandemic put an end to all of our marketing work for in-person recruitment events, and it meant we wouldn\u2019t be seeing our friends in admissions anymore, as their regular trips to Hanoi were cancelled indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While newly released vaccines give us all the hope of an eventual return to travel for recruitment, there is good reason to believe that this new normal is here to stay. We see three key trends that will impact recruitment marketing going forward, and will likely prevent us from spending happy hour with our favorite partners for some years to come:<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe music had to stop sometime<\/h4>\n\n\n\n