All schools will agree that posting a great job advert takes a lot of time and effort. So it can be pretty disheartening when you realise that your lovingly-crafted ad didn’t pack the intended punch with the candidates you want to attract.
It might be that your ads are receiving too few applicants, or maybe applications are pouring in from candidates who simply don’t match the quality or calibre required. Either way, it’s about time you took action, because for your school to benefit from top talent, you need to attract those candidates in the first place.
Here are three possible reasons your ads aren’t reaching the right people:
1. You’re not posting on the right site
First things first: the platform you advertise on is key to success. If you’re receiving lots of irrelevant applications or experiencing low conversion rates, it could be that you’re posting ads in the wrong places. To fine-tune your targeting, you need to advertise on the right site for your niche audience and not a generalist jobs site.
If you haven’t already, you should place your ads on Eteach. It’s the number one job board for the education sector, with more than 1.7 million candidates, and over one million visits and 1.2 million job views per month.
2. You’re not selling your school
At the risk of stating the obvious, there are a lot of schools currently recruiting, each one vying for the attention of the shrinking pool of highly-skilled candidates. To be in with a chance of getting noticed, your job ads need to go beyond listing the standard benefits and requirements of working at a school and instead, focus on effectively communicating your unique employer value proposition (EVP).
Your ads must answer one crucial question: why should a candidate work for your school? Do you offer flexible and part-time working? Are you committed to teacher training and development? Has your school been awarded any accolades worth a mention? You need to shout about your school from the rooftops because no one else will! List your USPs, convey your culture and help those candidates see why they’re the perfect fit your school.
3. There’s no obvious call-to-action
So, a candidate has read your job ad, decided they’re the right fit, and then...nothing. This might be because you’re bombarding candidates with information; lots of long, dense text in job descriptions or links taking them to different pages might distract them from the one thing you want them to do: hit that ‘apply’ button.
Our advice would be to remove links taking candidates to external sites or pages, and make sure your job ads are digestible – i.e., say what you want to say in as few words as possible.
The Eteach site facilitates easy application with one-click apply options through its mobile-optimised career site. It shouldn’t be a battle for candidates to apply for a job at your school; if you make the process quick and easy, you can guarantee you’ll attract more of the right people.
Eteach are education recruitment experts and we have the right tools to help your school recruit better, smarter and faster. We’re more than a job board, providing recruitment management services and software to help you manage recruitment more effectively and build your bespoke, talent pool community. If you want to find out more, give us a call on 0845 226 1906.