Interim Senior Director - Student Recruitment Performance & Transformation

Risepoint is an education technology company that helps regional universities launch and grow online programs for modern learners. Risepoint supports more than 100 universities and colleges across five countries, with programs concentrated in high-demand fields including nursing, healthcare, teaching, business, technology, and public service. Our suite of products and services supports the full student journey and each university’s long-term goals. Together, we increase access to affordable education that delivers a strong return on investment for learners and meets employer and community needs. Learn more at risepoint.com.

The Impact You Will Make

The Interim Senior Director, Student Recruitment Performance and Transformation will firstly provide transformation and change leadership to the Student Engagement team and secondly take full accountability for recruitment performance and leadership of the function during the maternity-cover period.  The role will deliver three critical transformation outcomes, initiated during an initial period of overlap with the Director, Student Engagement:

1. Strengthen management capability and high-performance culture

2. Build an operating model that can scale

3. Create more data and tech enabled recruitment performance.

In parallel, providing interim leadership of the engagement team through the launch and growth of new university partnerships, ensuring teams have the capacity, capability, processes and support required to deliver successfully. Maintaining a strong focus on performance and student experience across existing partners as the portfolio grows. 

How You Will Bring Our Mission to Life

What You Will Do

As a transformational and performance focused interim role, the initial focus will be biased towards diagnosis, resetting and kicking off transformation in advance of the transition of responsibilities to cover the maternity period, over which the focus will be on leadership, performance and transformation. 

Transformation focus:

• Strengthen management capability and embed a high performance culture
  • Establish clear and consistent expectations for excellent recruitment management, including team leadership, coaching, performance management, funnel ownership and operational discipline.
  • Coach and develop Student Engagement Managers, providing regular feedback, challenge and support to strengthen their effectiveness.
  • Create a culture of accountability and high performance in which expectations are clear, strong performance is recognised and performance challenges are addressed effectively.
  • Build leadership capability, resilience and succession across the function to support continued growth.

• Develop and implement a scalable Student Engagement operating model capable of supporting Risepoint's EMEA growth over the next 2–3 years.
  • Assess and evolve organisational structures, roles, management spans, capacity models and ways of working to ensure the function remains effective as the number and scale of university partnerships grows.
  • Determine where greater standardisation, shared capability or partner-specific approaches will create the best combination of performance, partner experience and efficiency.
  • Identify the capabilities the Student Engagement organisation will require for its next stage of growth and develop plans to build them.
  • Drive productivity and process improvements that enable growth without proportional increases in headcount or organisational complexity.
  • Develop and begin implementing a clear roadmap for the evolution of the Student Engagement function.

• Use technology, automation, and data to improve recruitment effectiveness and scalability.
  • Champion adoption of technology and AI-enabled solutions that materially improve recruiter and manager effectiveness, student experience and operational efficiency.
  • Lead the ongoing embedding of Salesforce and associated tools into recruitment workflows and management practices.
  • Identify and prioritise opportunities to automate lower-value manual activity while maintaining an appropriate level of personalised student engagement.
  • Review and embed consistent reporting, dashboards and performance measures across Student Engagement, providing a single, trusted view of performance for key stakeholders and the team.

 In addition, over the maternity cover period:

• Lead the EMEA Student Engagement function to deliver strong, sustainable and increasingly predictable recruitment performance across our university partner portfolio
  • Own delivery of agreed enrolment, application and conversion targets across existing and new university partners with clear accountability for recruitment performance at partner, team and individual level.
  • Embed rigorous, data-led performance management and forecasting, ensuring teams understand performance, identify risks and opportunities early and take effective action.
  • Use funnel, conversion and productivity data to identify the drivers of performance and prioritise interventions that improve outcomes.
  • Ensure recruitment activity delivers an exceptional prospective-student experience alongside strong commercial and operational performance.

• Lead Student Engagement through the launch and growth of new university partnerships while maintaining strong performance across the existing portfolio.
  • Own Student Engagement readiness for new partner launches, ensuring appropriate capacity, leadership, processes, training, technology and performance expectations are in place.
  • Work closely with Implementation, Marketing and partner teams to translate programme and enrolment ambitions into effective recruitment plans.
  • Establish effective portfolio-level capacity and resource planning, ensuring resources can be deployed appropriately as priorities and demand change.
  • Identify operational and capacity risks early and take action to protect recruitment performance and student experience as the partner portfolio grows.

• Drive continuous improvement of the prospective-student journey and lead the interface between Student Engagement and Marketing.
  • Partner closely with Marketing to improve the end-to-end journey from initial enquiry through to enrolment, with shared focus on enrolment outcomes.
  • Use student, funnel and performance insight to identify opportunities to improve engagement and conversion at each stage of the journey.
  • Ensure recruitment approaches reflect differences in student audience, programme, geography and intent where appropriate.
  • Work cross-functionally with Marketing, Student Success, Academic Services and other teams to remove friction and create a consistent, high-quality student experience.

• Build strong relationships with university partners and provide confident senior leadership of Student Engagement across EMEA.
• Develop trusted relationships with existing and new university partners, acting as a senior advisor on recruitment performance, student engagement and opportunities for growth.
• Provide partners with transparent, evidence-based insight into performance, risks and actions.
• Represent Student Engagement within new partner launches, cross-functional initiatives and strategic projects.
• Contribute to business planning, organisational effectiveness and the continued growth of the EMEA business.
• Act as an ambassador for Risepoint internally and externally and support initiatives that strengthen Risepoint's reputation as a strategic partner within higher education

What Success Looks Like

• Recruitment performance is predictable and consistently delivers against agreed enrolment goals, delivering year over year growth in numbers.
• Student Engagement Managers lead accountable, high-performing teams with strong management and coaching disciplines.
• New partners launch successfully without compromising performance or student experience across existing partners.
• A scalable Student Engagement operating model is established to support EMEA growth over the next 2–3 years.
• Conversion, productivity and efficiency improve through better ways of working, data, technology, automation and AI enabling profitable growth

• undefined

• Achievement of enrolment targets and accuracy of recruitment forecasts
• Lead-to-application and lead-to-enrolment conversion improvements
• Recruiter productivity and operational efficiency
• Performance and capability of Student Engagement Managers and their teams
• Successful recruitment readiness and delivery for new partner launches
• Delivery and implementation of the future Student Engagement operating model
• Partner satisfaction and confidence in recruitment performance
• Measurable impact of technology, automation and AI initiatives

What You’ll Bring to the Team

Experience That Matters Most

• Significant senior leadership experience within a large scale, target driven recruitment, sales, enrolment or customer acquisition remote operation.
• Demonstrable experience leading an organisation through a material improvement or transformation in performance.
• Proven track record of creating high-performing management teams, including assessing leadership capability, coaching managers, addressing underperformance and making difficult people or organisation decisions.
• Experience designing and implementing robust management operating systems, including forecasting, productivity management, performance reviews, coaching rhythms and clear accountability.
• Experience scaling an operation through significant growth, ideally including new markets, products, clients or partner launches.
• Highly analytical and commercially minded, with a track record of using funnel and operational data to diagnose performance and drive intervention.
• Experience leading meaningful technology, automation or AI-enabled operational change.

Experience That’s Great to Have

• Experience in online higher education, education technology, OPM or another high-consideration consumer recruitment environment.
• Understanding of the prospective-student journey and the interaction between Marketing and Recruitment.
• Experience in multi-brand, multi-product or multi-partner operating environments.
• Experience using Salesforce or similar CRM platforms.
• UK higher education knowledge.
• Previous interim or transformation leadership experience.

RisePoint is an equal opportunity employer and supports a diverse and inclusive workforce