School branding is fast becoming a hot concept in the world of recruitment. Just like branding in other areas of life – for example in the sale of products and services – school branding is what helps schools to put their message across to the world of what they are all about. It also plays a role in helping schools to attract the best candidates for the rolls available.
School branding is not just for independent schools looking to maintain their place in the market. We are living in times when every school needs a brand that sets them aside from others and helps to convey to the world its character, ethos, and personality.
School branding and recruitment
School branding at its core is about conveying to children, families, and potential employees what the educational experience is all about in your setting. What drives your school’s philosophy will be at the centre of any branding you do.
It is important to remember that it is your brand that will help potential candidates to decide which vacancy to go for, at a time of immense choice. It is your brand that differentiates you from the schools around you who may be seen as your competitors when it comes to attracting great candidates.
These ideas may help to put your school’s brand front and centre of your recruitment efforts:
- Vacancies - Make sure that vacancies are clearly signposted from your home page. Convoluted trails through numerous clicks do nothing for a school’s attractiveness! Vacancy advertising is your invitation to what you hope will be the brightest and best of applicants, so make ads visible and efficient to navigate so that the candidates you want to attract are not enticed away by better design!
- Benefits - The benefits that you offer staff should be an enticement for potential employees rather than something that a successful candidate finds out about only after the interview. The aim is to use these benefits as an attraction rather than an afterthought. It is worth making benefits visible on your website so that anyone considering applying for a job in your school can see well in advance what they can expect. Offering any degree of flexibility in working hours or working location, particularly if there is the possibility of working from home, can be a major positive in the eyes of some candidates. By not offering flexibility where possible, you might just be preventing the perfect candidate from applying. Think, too, about the way in which staff wellbeing is portrayed in your messaging to potential candidates. If it is not mentioned at all, that says a huge amount compared with the school that makes clear what support staff can expect.
- Consistency – there needs to be consistency in your messaging to potential candidates and this is where branding can really help. Consistency helps those interacting with your school to recognise and trust your message. Each interaction therefore starts to feel familiar – a good thing if you are new to an organisation and trying to find your way around how things are done there. Consistency in your visual identity should ideally run through all your communications, including your website, online forms, online ads, your social media posts and so on. Think about the pictures you choose, the fonts you use, the tone of your writing, the page layouts you opt for, the colours and the feel of the image you wish to portray. Aim for consistency throughout all of that so that the character of your school really comes across. Brand guidelines for staff will help, although too many rules will be stifling.
- Celebration – It can be effective to showcase the expertise in your school. This can help to add gravitas to your brand image and helps potential candidates to see themselves in an organisation that is committed to supporting staff to be excellent at what they do. The same applies for the children and young people in your school, too. Celebrate learning, in all its capacities.
- Community – effective school branding will convey a sense of community. This is so important in a profession such as teaching where the job often requires people to give their all. Make sure your branding conveys the kind of community that you are and want to be so that candidates can assess whether they will fit in.
- Conveying your message – As well as your website, social media is a great way of getting your school brand out there. Not all platforms suit all schools, but take some time to choose which ones are right for you. Be consistent in the way you use them. Remember that every post tells a story so use that potential to the max. You can celebrate achievements at your school, advertise events, encourage engagement, network and collaborate, demonstrate your commitment to inclusion, and provide engaging content (keep it real rather than artificial). Your whole school community can be involved in this. Content is, and always has been, king, when it comes to conveying your message.
Your school’s brand should ideally enhance the internal as well as external perception of your organisation. It should also enhance a sense of belonging and togetherness, with a shared vision and values. If your brand is not a source of pride in what you have achieved and all you hope to achieve, now is the time to focus on why that may be. In the competitive landscape of teacher recruitment, spending time refining your brand, and your offer to potential employees, will always be time well spent.
Looking to enhance your school’s candidate attraction with a comprehensively branded Career Site and more? Get in touch with the experts at Eteach to see how we can elevate your brand effortlessly.
About the author
Elizabeth Holmes
After graduating with a degree in Politics and International Relations from the University of Reading, Elizabeth Holmes completed her PGCE at the Institute of Education, University of London. She then taught humanities and social sciences in schools in London, Oxfordshire and West Sussex, where she ran the history department in a challenging comprehensive. Elizabeth specialises in education but also writes on many other issues and themes. As well as her regular blogs for Eteach and FEjobs, her books have been published by a variety of publishers and translated around the world. Elizabeth has also taught on education courses in HE and presented at national and international conferences.
