Admissions Operations Associate

Role Overview

At Merit America, the Admissions Team is responsible for helping to identify and prepare applicants for life-changing careers. We are seeking an Admissions Operations Associate who will be integral to our ability to serve twice as many learners in 2024. The primary mission of the Admissions Operations Associate is to support an exceptional learner experience from initial application through program acceptance and drive operational excellence by utilizing and/or creating the tools and processes. This role is essential to selecting thousands of learners from across the country to participate in a rigorous training program that provides life-changing career opportunities for our learners.

The Admissions Operations Associate is responsible for the operational aspects at the end of the admissions funnel; verifying pre-work, adding users to Merit America Admission platforms (Slack, Coursera), filing discrepancy reports, and ensuring all data is balanced in Salesforce, and

facilitating track switch requests post-acceptance. The Admissions Operations Associate will serve as a host for program prep events to prepare applicants for the program who have completed their prework.

The Admissions Operations Associate will play a key role in supporting the scale of Merit America, directly ensuring the organization's ability to serve 10,000 learners annually by 2025. This is an ideal role for those seeking to make a meaningful direct impact on the lives of underserved members of our country and to help build a fast-growing nonprofit startup. Ideal candidates will be those who excel at people management, system implementation, and operational excellence, with a proven track record of using data to optimize an end-to-end user experience.

The Admissions Operations Associate is non-exempt and will report directly to the Admissions Operations Lead and works primarily with the program team across Merit America.

Responsibilities

The responsibilities of the Admissions Operations Associate will include, but are not limited to, the following:

Applicant Communication 50%

• Ensuring that Merit America applicants experience top-notch communication and service as they move through our admission funnel.
• Serving as the primary point of contact for applicant inquiries.
• Owning responses and maintenance of applicant inquiries in Intercom, looping in other relevant parties as needed.
• Maintaining a Customer Satisfaction rate of 75% or higher.

Admissions Operations Support 30%

• Driving admission operations effectiveness by managing the following processes across the admissions pipeline with anticipation of processing 60,000 applications annually:
• Managing the transition of applicants from initial application through all phases of the admissions process up until they are enrolled in the program.
• Maintaining numerous Google Sheets to ensure accurate, up-to-date information.
• Maintaining accurate and up-to-date data in Salesforce, including up-to-date admissions status for all learners in the funnel.

Event Execution 20%:

• • In partnership with the Admissions Operations lead, schedule, plan, and execute engaging and meaningful Program Prep events intended to provide an introduction to the Merit America Program.
  • Schedule and execute weekly Q&A sessions to answer applicant questions and provide guidance and support to potential applicants.

What Makes a Successful Candidate:

We know that women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities are often less likely to apply to a position if they don't match 100% of the job qualifications. Don't let that be the reason you miss out on this opportunity! We encourage you to apply if you can demonstrate many of these skills and competencies. Below are the skills that are relevant for thriving in this role:

Must haves:

• Operational Excellence: Ability to manage your own schedule and balance multiple demands, with demonstrated success working in fast-paced environments, solving problems creatively, and delivering measurable results
• Professionalism & Communication: Highest standard of professional conduct and communication; articulate with strong self-confidence and initiative; strong verbal and written communication skills are a must
• Relationship-Building: Strong interpersonal and communication skills and ability to form trust-based relationships with applicants and other stakeholders
• Proficient with Google workspace (Google sheets, docs, etc)
• Sense of deep personal responsibility for our collective success
• Experience with Salesforce or other CRM platforms
• Be energized by our organizational mission and impact
• Proven history of living within our values

Nice to haves:

• • Entrepreneurial Drive: Resourcefulness, agility, and comfort working in ambiguous, quickly changing environments, including eagerness to wear multiple hats as needed and to help shape our start-up's future
  • Lifelong learning: Commitment to lifelong learning and ongoing personal and professional development; openness to feedback and relentless pursuit of improvement
  • Social-Impact Mindset: Desire to work directly with underserved populations and meaningfully improve their lives, and experience driving a "double bottom line" in terms of producing business and mission impact
  • Experience leading/presenting to large groups of people in a virtual setting
  • Commitment to lifelong learning and ongoing personal and professional development
  • Prior experience in workforce development, edTech, or equivalent training programs

Details/Logistics:

• This position is full-time: 4-day work week (Fridays are an operating day if there is a holiday closure during the week)
• Location: Remote
• Salary: $61,950

Our goal is to have competitive and equitable compensation. We have a market-based compensation approach, which means we benchmark each role from reputable data sources. We compare our benchmarks against similarly sized non-profit organizations with comparable annual budgets and geographical areas. We pay the same rate for the same roles and adjust to comply with statutory mandates.