High school outreach activities in the engineering context aim to attract high school students to join a university engineering programme. Oftentimes, high school outreach activities are organised and conducted by university representatives, for instance, teachers and students, who employ different engagement strategies during their interaction with the high school students. While studies exist concerning the organisational and pedagogical aspects of high school engineering outreach activities, there are limited attempts to develop a conceptual framework specifically designed for profiling the engagement strategies employed by university representatives in this context. The current study uses existing research related to pre-university students and insights from sociology and psychology to advance such a conceptual framework. The application of the framework was illustrated by conducting five focus groups with 19 university representatives involved in high school outreach activities organised by a Romanian public engineering university.