HL: IEC is a university level recruitment agency in Germany which I founded in 2001 as a subsidiary of a Norwegian company which recruited to the US, Australia and to England. IEC’s history with quite a lot of our partners actually goes back to 1995. I was brought in to build the German branch and later on, in 2008, the owner sold the Finnish and Norwegian branches to somebody else and sold IEC in Germany to me.

I started IEC as a small agency, which had the role of opening up the German market to Australian institutions. After a few years I took on New Zealand institutions, and then after a couple more years I started to open up to institutions in other destinations.

The PIE: Do you have a background in international education?

HL: I studied Russian and I taught for the German Academic Exchange Service at the State University of St Petersburg, so I was in that sphere already. But still, it was a totally new start because my focus was East, and all of a sudden I started up this new company which was looking West. I had to brush up my high school English!

“Back then this was a totally foreign thing to students. Banks and companies had still not discovered that they could sell stuff to students”

Back then it was a totally foreign thing to them. Banks and companies had still not discovered that they could sell stuff to students; there was no marketing done at institutions.

The PIE: How is IEC?

HL: We have 22 staff members based in our Berlin office, plus two in Hungary and we represent just over 100 institutions in 14 countries. In 2013, we successfully enrolled just over 1,000 students and we anticipate that it will be around 1,400-1,500 in 2014, so there’s strong growth in the German market at the moment.

The PIE: What’s fuelling the growth?

HL: Multiple things – the way I built the company, I always focused on a clear service profile and heavily invested in growth. I hired the right people and introduced a very good service for students, which German institutions appreciate a lot.

“Institutions see us as a partner in enabling international student mobility”

I developed a service for institutions as well, so they see us as a partner in enabling international student mobility. They have the exchanges and the free movers they send through us. I guess that is the right way to go: to partner closely with German and also international institutions.

The PIE: You said that you prefer to have a targeted approach, rather than feel like a big agency – how does that work?

HL: Of course you have to reach out to students in some general ways, to build a brand, but we have one marketing staff member responsible only for making sure that each institution that signs up with us really gets the attention in the market.

There’s also people who are supported by country specialists in the team, who will make sure that when the IEC student advisors talk to students, every institution gets the attention and the students they can get from the German market through us.

The PIE: You mentioned social media marketing – how does technology help you in marketing to students?

HL: Technology’s incredibly important. We’ve been producing university video clips, so universities will invest in this with us and arrange marketing campaigns around that. I’ve got five staff trained in social media marketing and the student advisors use Facebook as well.

The PIE: Are the majority of the students you work with from Germany?

HL: Yes. There’s some from Austria and Switzerland, and now we’re targeting Hungary.

The PIE: Tell more about what what’s driving demand in Hungary.