If you are recruiting teachers it’s important to make sure you are using effective hiring practices. We are providing a free resource to help you ensure you are using fair and reliable hiring processes.  As we discuss in our last strategy, hiring effective teachers is one of your best recruiting tools.

This packet of resources provides:

* A best practice guide to managing perceptions of fairness in school district hiring practices.

* A step-by-step selection process guide to help your district create hiring frameworks that can be perceived as fair and reliable.

* A sample scoring guide for applications and resumes to allow for reliable judgements of applicants’ hiring materials.

 

Even if you feel your current process is effective, you may want to compare these resources to your current methods.

 

 

Without formal teacher recruitment strategies there is no real direction for evaluating successful recruiting pipelines, managing the message you convey to potential applicants, and quickly identifying teachers who have the ability to help your district pivot in this new era of education.  If your strategies to recruit teachers are as modern as the mimeograph, these teacher recruitment strategies may be useful for you.

Last spring I spoke with an aspiring teacher who had recently attended a job fair hosted by a local university.  She said it was nice to see so many districts that were looking for good new teachers and she felt encouraged that she would find a job. I asked her if any of the districts stood out.  She said, “Yeah, one really stood out to me and I kind of felt sorry for them.”  I asked her what she meant.  She said many districts had posters that displayed their schools.  Some had large TVs showing footage of their campuses and the community.  Several others had informational handouts and were passing out USB drives with more information about the district as well as applications loaded on them.  “So what about the one you felt sorry for?” I asked.  The aspiring teacher said, “Well, he was just standing there next to a bare table with a stack of applications.”  She went on to say, “It reminded me of the kid who had an undecorated oatmeal can for a Valentine’s Day box when everyone else spent time putting something cool together.”  I asked if she went up to the table to learn more about the district, she said, “Yeah, but it was hard to take them serious after seeing how much effort everyone else had put into showcasing their district.”

Don’t be the kid with the last minute Valentine’s Day box when you are recruiting new teachers this spring.

How Modern Are Your Teacher Recruiting Strategies?

Does your school district have modern effective strategies to recruit teachers?  It’s hunting season for school administrators.  Typically when you think of hunting season you think of the colors of autumn and the cool crisp air of fall.  For school administrators though, hunting season begins in the early spring when college students are graduating from teacher education programs, and experienced teachers can be wooed to your district before new contracts are signed.

Let’s stay with this analogy of hunting and recruiting teachers for a moment.  Over the past 50 years the sport of hunting has evolved and changed utilizing every advantage imaginable from the clothing, weapons, game calls, scent block, and a multitude of technological tools ranging from cameras to mobile apps.  Meanwhile, the demand for effective teachers has never been higher, yet many districts operate without any modern strategies to recruit teachers beyond replacing job postings from bulletin boards in the teachers’ lounge and ...