The single change you need to make to take control of your recruitment for the new academic year, is to approach it with a proactive strategy. A school that often resorts to costly ‘fire-fighting’ recruitment needs to spend time now (not money) updating their methods. If you can apply your lower cost options such as online advertising more effectively to cast your net wider, you can get more response out of less advertising spend whilst dramatically cutting your need to fall back on head-hunter fees.
So what behaviours can schools adopt now?
1. Groundwork.
Our candidates tell us that applying for a teaching job often takes an incredible 2 hours. As a result, they will now research schools thoroughly before choosing whom to apply to. Adverts must be backed up with information about you elsewhere. Back up your ‘employer brand’ with a career page, separate from your school’s parent- and child-facing website, dedicated entirely to positioning you as the employer of choice.
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2. Establish a social media presence.
This is about increasing your visibility and reminding teachers you’re there. Professional marketers know that recruitment needs to start long before the candidate applies for the job; it needs to start before they even know they want a job, so we nurture the passive candidates. On a monthly basis, around one third of our 2 million teachers become ‘active’ and, because we’ve kept in touch, they search for the Eteach job board. Celebrate achievements and grow community with your social media profile. Our customers get exposure to our niche following of 20,000 teachers.
3. Use cheap or free resources to reach out further.
A typical advert on our online job board gets seen by around 400 teachers, yet with social media enhancement, that normally increases to over 800! Firstly, have every parent and teacher in the school share that vacancy. Teachers know teachers and parents are local. Gone are the days when you should be ashamed of having vacancies. Make parents aware that if they fill that vacancy, the cash left is a school trip!
4. Start a talent pool/talent bank.
Large employers build a community of people who have already thought ‘I could work there’. Why not create a Talent Pool to retain and organise candidate details to consider them for future vacancies? That means previous job adverts double their return: providing you with a free pond of brand advocates from which to fish an already receptive candidate. Candidates can register on your career site year-round.
5. Investigate suppliers who give you more bang for your buck.
Using an education-only job board for your advertising will give you a large but specific audience nationally and internationally. Our job board annual licence gives high value for money, including a bespoke career site for your school and also gives unlimited advertising that includes leadership vacancies.
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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.