It’s simple: a key part of ensuring that your school runs effectively and efficiently, and your pupils receive a great education, is employing fantastic teachers and support staff. But, with teaching recruitment numbers at an all time low, and with more teachers now leaving the classroom than joining it, how can you ensure that you recruit the best talent out there? To help you with your search we’ve pulled some top tips together. Below we’ll look at;
- Social media recruiting
- Targeting passive contacts
- The use of modern technology
It has never been easy to find the right candidates: skills shortages, scarcity of talent, cost pressures and changing recruitment methods have all impacted hiring practices for UK employers over the last couple of years. So, it may be time to think outside of the box when you’re looking to recruit both your permanent and temporary members of staff. For example, it may be time to upskill people who already have some of the softer skills required to be a teacher, such as your cover supervisors, or to recruit people who are looking to return to work after some time away from the classroom. Here are our top three recommendations to help you think creatively about your recruitment methods and find some fantastic teachers.
Recruiting through social media.
Social media is a key way for you to connect with and manage your talent community. Organisations who currently make use of social media primarily do so to create a ‘talent pipeline’ to tap into when a vacancy arises. So, whether it’s LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter that your school uses, its highly likely that candidates will have registered their details on social media, and will use it to look for their next job. In fact, although LinkedIn and Twitter are still the top two sites used by corporates, 74% of professionals still maintain a profile on Facebook, so it’s easy to see how a multitude of social media platforms can be used in your recruitment strategy.
With social media being such an important tool for any candidate when they are looking to find their next place to work it’s important to keep things current. Potential candidates are likely to take a look at your school’s Facebook profile, or catch up on your latest tweets - it’s also important for you to keep your social media pages updated with information about the culture and lifestyle of your school, as well as using social media to source candidates and advertise your roles.
Targeting passive candidates.
It is becoming more and more important to reach out to, and engage proactively with non-active candidates. Non-active or ‘passive’ candidates are those who are not actively seeking a new job, but could be interested in the right opportunity, should it come along. A 2017 LinkedIn survey found that about 80% of professionals consider themselves ‘passive,’ while an earlier survey revealed that only 61% of companies actually recruit these candidates. Passive candidates therefore make up a very significant part of the potential total recruitment pool.
One way of attracting these kinds of candidates is to encourage your existing staff members to refer their friends and family members to you for your vacancies: if people can see that your current teachers are happy and satisfied in their roles, this can be a fantastic way to convince someone that your school is the place to go.
It’s all about technology.
Technology is everywhere in today’s society. Tapping, liking, and swiping on our smartphones has quickly become part of our everyday routine, from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. So, what better way is there to recruit candidates than by targeting them through technology they already use?
When you work with us at Randstad, we use our industry-leading work app to quickly match compliant and skilled candidates to your available vacancies. Our technology allows our candidates to find and accept your roles with a tap on their smartphone, when and where they want - we have even filled a vacancy in just 7 seconds of it being live. This means that you will never be left without cover. In an emergency, the speed of our candidate matching process can allow us to fill your booking whilst we're still on the phone to you.
So, we’ve looked at what you can do when you need to find candidates, but where do candidates go to find jobs? Our recent employer branding report has revealed the top five channels that job seekers in the UK use to look for their next role:
- Job portals (such as indeed.com)
- Personal connections/referrals
- Recruiters
- Company careers site
In fact, 38% of people said that they would use job portals, suggesting that your candidates will commonly use job searching engines to find roles. At Randstad, we can work with you to ensure that your vacancies are posted out on our website and relevant job boards, so that they are there for job seekers to find. We invest in a broad range of candidate attraction tools to ensure we have a pool of qualified candidates ready to work whenever a vacancy arises in your team. Get in touch with our team of specialist recruiters today to find out more.
