HOW TO SELECT THE RIGHT TEACHERS IN RECRUITMENT
Hiring teachers can be a challenging task. Of course, that applies to all professions. But, for teachers, there’s an extra burden: they’re the ones who largely determine whether children will love or hate school, they’re responsible for teaching them valuable skills, and they have a huge impact on your school’s overall reputation.
A bad hire could cost you more than you can count at first glance. You wouldn’t want to end up with a Ms. Trunchbull, would you?
Studies have shown that there are now fewer people who choose a degree in education than in the past. This is an alarming issue for schools: how can they deal with the teacher shortage while continuing to offer high-quality education to children?
Let’s take this step-by-step together and answer all the questions you may have when it comes to hiring teachers:
How can I find a teacher?
Or, better, “How can I find a good teacher?” Here are some of the best practices for hiring teachers for your school or other educational organization:
o. Post job ads on niche, education-specific job boards
The most popular job boards and professional networks, such as Monster, Indeed and LinkedIn, are usually good candidate sources. But if you want to narrow down your audience and reach out to people who are specifically looking for teaching jobs, it’s best to use niche teacher job boards.
You can promote your open role on sites like SchoolSpring and TeachingJobs or check out local websites and newspapers. When hiring teachers, you don’t want to get hundreds of applications; you want to get your job ads in front of the right candidates with the desired skill set. To make your recruiting life easier, we’ve compiled a list of the best teacher job boards for you.
O.Recruiting teachers is a craft plagued with archaic traditions. This can result in processes that are often clumpy, not hugely insightful, and which can present major barriers to finding the right candidate.
Getting your recruitment process right is key to school improvement and students being able to progress. From the moment you advertise the job, be specific about what you’re looking for. A generic job advert for your school won’t necessarily reel in the big fish –
it’s all about standing out and pricking up the right ears.
Don’t be afraid to point out when candidates aren’t suited to the role. Be ruthless when shortlisting so that you don’t waste any time at the interview stage.
Some individuals may impress more at interviews, and every school will have its own contextual needs, but don’t be afraid to say when nobody meets the threshold. It’s far better to cast your net again than appoint the wrong candidate.
COVID restrictions have made securing teaching time classes more of a challenge, but there’s still plenty of scope for simulation. Presenting candidates with real-life scenarios and different problems to solve, in line with the role that they’re applying for, can be an effective way of seeing how they might cope in your context.
You can gain lots of insight about a person from how they react to situations outside of the classroom. More often than not, I’ve found it’s these tasks above everything else that really show who will fit best into the school.
Leaders will likely be overseeing the process, but they’re not always best placed to see the true fabric of an individual. Don’t underestimate how much those informal moments during the day can reveal about candidates.
Similarly, considering the opinions of students can be a great way of getting some alternative insight – though don’t pick your students at random. If trained first and deployed effectively, they can be shrewd judges of character…