Halda AI Student Recruiter Is Now Available to Every College and University

• Piloted by select colleges and universities, AI Student Recruiter is the industry’s first agentic AI tool to offer prospective students personalized informational content across all channels: web, email, phone, SMS communications, and WhatsApp
• Part of Halda’s AI Enrollment Platform, AI Student Recruiter will help higher education institutions offer 1-to-1 personalized recruitment at scale in a mode especially well suited to digitally native and first-generation prospective students

March 5, 2025 – Provo, UTAH – Halda today announced that AI Student Recruiter — previously available only to a select group of pilot institutions — is now open to any college, university, or higher education institution.

AI Student Recruiter is the first agentic AI tool built specifically for enrollment. It personalizes the experience for each prospective student across every channel they use: website, email, phone, SMS, and WhatsApp. The system maintains context across all ofthose channels and devices, so a student who starts a conversation on the web can pick it up over text without starting over.

The pilot included Lynn University, University of Montana, and University of West Florida.

The Problem It Solves

Higher education is under real economic pressure. Nearly 100 institutions closed between the 2022–23 and 2023–24 academic years. Enrollment teams are stretched thin, recruitment tools don’t talk to each other, and prospective students — especially first-gen anddigitally native ones — disengage when the process feels complicated.

The gap is usually in the middle: a student is interested, visits the website, has questions, and can’t get a fast, relevant answer. So they move on.

“The college admission and enrollment processes have always been complicated and intimidating for the majority of prospective students. With Halda, we’re making it dead simple for interested students to get the personalized information they need efficiently through their preferred channel, without requiring resource-constrained institutions to invest in costly website overhauls or armies of recruiters.”

— Lance Hydrick, Co-Founder and CEO, Halda

What AI Student Recruiter Actually Does

One AI Agent Across Every Channel

A prospect completes a brief onboarding form on the institution’s website. From that point, Halda’s AI Student Recruiter serves personalized content, recommended next steps, and real-time Q&A — on the website, over SMS, by phone, via email, or through WhatsApp. The same context follows the student across all of them.

Personalization Without a Website Overhaul

Halda deploys by reading the institution’s existing website — its primary source of truth. No new knowledge bases. No separate platform to build and maintain. Most institutions are live within a week.

Scale Without Headcount

One AI agent can field thousands of questions simultaneously. For resource-constrained institutions,that’s the equivalent of a large recruiter and customer service operation —without the overhead.

“There’s been much discussion about the role of AI in the classroom. We’ve focused our efforts on making AI work for the mutual benefit of the student and the institution. The recruitment process is a perfect place to focus because there’s so much unnecessary friction.”

— Dallin Palmer, Co-Founder, Halda

Who It’s Built For

AI Student Recruiter is designed for any prospective student, but it’s built with two cohorts in mind:

1. Digitally native students who expect a personalized, self-service experience and disengage when they have to wait for an answer.
2. First-generation college students navigating admissions, financial aid, and enrollment for the first time — without a family roadmap to guide them.

Lance Hydrick, Halda’s CEO, was a first-generation college student. That experience shapes how the product is built.

What Pilot Institutions Saw

Three institutions participated in the initial pilot: Lynn University, University of Montana, and University of West Florida.

“Halda has quickly become one of our most valuable resources for prospective student engagement in terms of inquiries and applicants. Their progressive approach to AI puts us ahead in an ever-more competitive landscape.”

— Jenny Petty, Vice President of Marketing Communication, Experience and Engagement, University of Montana

“When the AI pilot was introduced, it was an easy decision to move forward. AI is the future, and Halda consistently prioritizes students by ensuring they receive the information they need. By supporting students, they are also supporting us.”

— Melissa Webb, Ph.D., Assistant Dean of the Graduate School, University of West Florida

Lynn University’s results with Halda’s AI Student Recruiter: a 25% email click-through rate (five times the industry average) and 45% higher site re-engagement among students who received Halda-powered outreach.

About Halda

Halda was founded in 2021 by Lance Hydrick, Spencer Peterson, and Dallin Palmer. Hydrick is a former Amazon engineer and Y Combinator alumnus. The company is based in Provo, Utah and currently serves more than 150 colleges and universities.

Halda’s AI Enrollment Platform unifies omnichannel recruitment campaigns, websites, and CRMs into a single personalized system for student recruitment. Last year the platform achieved 97% gross retention across institutional partners and 92% positive student feedback.