[Hiring] Manager, Admissions Advising @University of the People

Role Description

The Manager, Admissions Advising leads the Team Leaders who run the advising pods and owns the team's results on application fee payments and self-funded enrollments, along with SLA, productivity and CSAT. The Manager turns targets into plans, builds strong leaders underneath, and makes sure the team scales as student numbers grow.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the numbers
  • Own conversion for Admissions Advising, and the operational KPIs that drive them: SLA, productivity, CSAT, attendance and attrition.
  • Set targets with Team Leaders, review them weekly, and act early when a pod is off track.
  • Own the daily, weekly and end-of-term reporting. Present results and next steps to the Director and to Enrolments leadership.
• Lead the Team Leaders
  • Hold regular 1:1s with each Team Leader, Specialists and Advisors. Coach them on people management, pod ownership and decision making.
  • Give each Team Leader clear ownership, and make sure Specialists and Senior Advisors have real scope, not extra tasks.
  • Run performance management with HR, including MIP and PIP, from first conversation to outcome.
  • Build the career path from Advisor to Team Leader, including certification criteria for moving between pods.
• Run operations and quality
  • Keep queues healthy across shifts, including the Night team and Saturday coverage.
  • Own escalations. Handle high severity cases and fix the cause so they do not repeat.
  • Work with the Quality and Knowledge Management lead to hold communication quality, CSAT and knowledge base accuracy to a clear standard.
• Work across teams
  • Be the main point of contact for Processing, Chat, Data, HR and Enrolments on advising matters.
  • Agree handoffs and SLAs with these teams, and clear blockers quickly so Team Leaders do not wait on them.
• Plan for scale
  • Turn term forecasts into workforce plans: advisors, temporary staff, Team Leaders and span of control.
  • Work with HR on hiring, and make sure each new batch has a structured onboarding and ramp-up plan.
  • Support the annual budget with headcount and productivity assumptions, and track against them.
  • Use productivity data and team feedback to keep daily targets realistic and fair.
• Improve and automate
  • Find repeat contact reasons and work with Data, Chat and Technology to reduce them through process fixes, self-service and automation.
  • Lead the rollout of AI chatbot, CRM and tooling changes in advising, including training and adoption.
  • Keep a short, current list of improvement projects with owners and dates.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in any discipline.
• 6 or more years of total experience, with at least 3 years leading teams in admissions, inside sales, customer success or customer support. Email and chat operations in a high volume setting are essential.
• At least 3 years managing Team Leaders or other people managers, with a team of 40 or more.
• A record of delivering conversion or revenue linked targets together with service targets such as SLA and CSAT.
• Hands-on experience with performance management, including improvement plans and exits, working with HR.
• Strong working knowledge of a CRM (Dynamics 365 or similar), advanced Excel and reporting dashboards.
• Excellent written and spoken English, with the ability to present to senior leaders.
• Willing to work flexible hours, including Saturday coverage and overlap with US time zones when needed.

Preferred

• Master's degree such as an MBA or PGDM.
• Experience in higher education, ed-tech or international student admissions.
• Experience scaling a team through fast growth, including workforce planning and large hiring batches.
• Exposure to rolling out AI chatbots, automation or a new CRM.
• Experience leading teams across more than one shift or language.