Getting the most out of … your application documents
Your Eteach portal gives you a huge range of flexibility to tailor exactly the candidate experience you want, while keeping all of your documents in one place.
The documents you include with an application play a huge role in persuading the candidate to start and complete an application form to work for you.
Equally, the application method you offer them is critical: job adverts offering a digital application form get twice as many applicants as those with downloadable forms and other methods.
We’ve created 3 clear sections for your documents
1. Employer Information
In your Eteach portal, you can now upload your own library of school level documents and save them to the system and toggle them on and off to appear for you at the times you create an individual vacancy. You can also select to show these on your career page, bulking that out with more informative content for the candidates researching why to work for you. Your Group or Trust can also upload documents here too.
The biggest error we see is schools uploading job descriptions on this page, when it is asked for at the ‘create a vacancy’ stage. We are making additional notes on this page to help commentate the job creation process to help out with this.
2. Application Forms
We strongly recommend you use the digital application form provided. Now that the education candidates are carrying out nearly 70% of their activity via mobile phones, the schools which allow candidates to apply via mobiles simply hear back from more of them, getting a much better return from the same advert.
However, the candidate experience is yours to tailor, so you are free to add your own downloadable forms in the Application form tab.
Interested in offering the full suite of bespoke application methods to your candidates? Speak to us about our advanced software, School Recruiter, here.
3. Application Supporting Documents tab
You also asked us for somewhere to store the other application forms and documents you need candidates to fill in, separately from the main application form. This might include medical forms or a referee sheet. But be aware! Documents in here are mandatory for the candidate to complete before their application will send to you.
Job-specific documents
Other items, such as the job description, are unique to the vacancy so you upload these in the ‘Create a vacancy’ page.
My top tip
Did you know… 60% of online application forms are abandoned mid-way due to length?
Based on the 65,000 adverts we see posted direct from schools each year on eteach.com, the biggest bit of advice I can give you is, ‘Be the school that’s easy to apply to!’. Schools tend to misuse application forms as a ‘catch-all’ document, when half the information is not actually needed until after interview. Under GDPR, can you justify why you ask for things like NI number and bank details so early? 30 questions or more results in 50% fewer applications, so if you can halve the length of your form, you should!
For all the how-to guides when using the Eteach client portal, check out the Knowledgebase in the bottom left of your client portal screen.
About the author
Katie Newell
Katie Newell BA(Hons) PGCE is an ex-primary school teacher, Head of Maths, Head of Year five and languages specialist. Katie qualified in Psychology at Liverpool then specialised in Primary Languages for her PGCE at Reading. Katie feels passionately that teachers are the unsung heroes of society; that opening minds to creative timetabling could revolutionise keeping women in teaching, and that a total change to pupil feedback is the key to solving the work life balance issue for the best job in the world.