Job Description
Position Summary:
Rice Business is a globally recognized, top-ranked graduate
business school distinguished by its rigorous academic standards
and a full portfolio of MBA programs, including Full-Time,
Professional (Weekend, Evening, and Hybrid), Executive and online
modalities. The Director of Full-Time MBA Recruiting and Admissions
serves as an elevated strategic partner for the school, tasked with
recruiting, admitting, and yielding future global business
leaders.
The Director of Full-Time MBA Recruiting and Admissions will report
directly to the Assistant Dean for Recruiting and Admissions and
will supervise a small team of enrollment management professionals
tasked with achieving enrollment targets for the Full-Time MBA
program. The Director will design the enrollment management
strategy in close coordination with the Assistant Dean. This
position will lead the Full-Time recruiting team and will also
serve as an active recruiter. The Director will co-lead AdCom with
the Assistant Dean for Full-Time MBA admissions decisions and will
be expected to actively engage with internal and external
stakeholders to ensure recruiting and admissions objectives are
achieved. This position will have critical oversight of the
Full-Time MBA strategy and will work closely with the Recruiting
and Admissions Office (RAO) leadership team to ensure synergy
across operations, candidate experience, and enrollment
management.
Special Instructions to Applicants:
All interested applicants should attach a resume and cover letter
in the Supporting Documents of the application, preferably in PDF
format, to avoid formatting issues. Applications submitted without
these documents will not be considered.
Ideal Candidate Statement:
The ideal candidate for this position is an enrollment management
expert with experience leading teams. This person is an excellent
communicator who thrives in a fast–paced professional landscape and
takes a proactive approach to meeting goals. This is a senior-level
position that operates with a solutions-oriented mindset. This
person is focused, positive, and results-driven. The Director must
cultivate strong relationships and collaborate effectively with
fellow RAO leaders, Rice Business stakeholders, and industry
colleagues. The ideal candidate for this position would have
supervisory experience with concrete examples of holding teams
accountable and leading with a coaching mindset. This person will
need to be able to work autonomously, be comfortable with managing
up and providing action-oriented and well-thought-out solutions to
the Assistant Dean. This person understands the Graduate Management
Education market, welcomes feedback, embraces creativity, and is
comfortable navigating the nuances between urgent and important.
This person should be strategic, outcomes-oriented, data-informed,
and AI-fluent to meet the needs/demands of the industry and the
Rice Business enrollment goals.
Workplace Requirements:
Rice Business primarily delivers residential classes and activities
taking place almost daily between 7 am and 10 pm. We value a highly
collaborative and community-based culture, with expectations to
provide in-person support and services to all members of our
community. Remote work options are limited. Most employment
activities are required to be performed in-person and on-campus.
This in-person approach is central to the successful achievement of
our research and academic missions.
This position is exclusively on-site, necessitating all duties to
be performed in-person at McNair Hall on a 5-day in-office schedule
with an 8:30am – 5:00 pm workday. Remote work opportunities will be
assessed and approved on an as-needed basis following the
successful conclusion of the probationary period
This position does include a high volume of professional events
occurring both nights and weekends, along with extensive travel
both domestically and internationally.
Business professional attire is often required, with the
flexibility to shift to business casual on non-event,
external-facing interactions.
Per Rice policy 440 , work
arrangements may be subject to change.
Hiring Range:
Minimum $80,000 and commensurate with experience.
*Exempt (salaried) positions under FLSA
are not eligible for overtime.
Minimum 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.
Skills:
- 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.
Preferences:
- 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.
Essential Functions:
- 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
Additional Functions:
- 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.
- Will 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
Rice University HR | Benefits:
https://knowledgecafe.rice.edu/benefits
Rice Mission and Values :
Mission and Values | Rice
University
Rice University is committed to ensuring Equal Employment
Opportunity and welcoming the fullness of diversity into our
candidate pools. Rice considers qualified applicants for employment
without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual
orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, genetic
information, disability, or protected veteran status. Rice also
provides reasonable accommodations to qualified persons with
disabilities. If an applicant requires a reasonable accommodation
for any part of the application or hiring process, please get in
touch with Rice University’s Human Resources Office via email at
facstaffada@rice.edu for support.
If you have any additional questions, please email us at
jobs@rice.edu . Thank you for your
interest in employment with Rice University.