Good teachers don’t grow on trees. Schools that wish to offer the best education need to build a reliable pipeline for attracting the best talent.
Unfortunately, hiring is stressful and expensive in any industry, especially education. No teachers are exactly alike- they bring different strengths, experiences, and teaching styles to the table. You can’t hire just anybody for your school.
There are many problems that go hand in hand with hiring teachers, including:
- Last-minute hiring
- Competition during peak season
- A limited pool of candidates
- Discontinuous hiring
- Difficulty comparing candidates
A bad hiring decision can spell disaster. The wrong employee can cost a business over $25,000.
Fortunately, there are good strategies for mitigating these issues.
One good way to solve all of them at once is to use a dedicated recruitment service, like Teach Away’s.
Common Problems That Occur During The Hiring Process
One problem that many schools experience is last-minute hiring. They wait until they absolutely need a new teacher. By then they will have missed most high quality candidates.
Another problem is competition during peak season. While schools occasionally need a new teacher when one leaves during the year, most hiring takes place between January and March.
Schools wind up competing for the top talent all at once. They also experience the frustrations of an annual stop/start hiring pattern. Instead of having one system in place that operates year round, they have to redesign their hiring process year after year.
Without an efficient framework for comparing, deciding between two qualified teachers can be extremely difficult. They may come from distinct backgrounds and offer different teaching styles.
Because of these factors, traditional hiring leaves schools with a limited pool of candidates. They lose out on teachers who are looking for jobs outside the peak period.
Strategies For Building A Reliable Talent Pipeline
If you could imagine the optimal scenario for bringing quality talent to your school, it might look something like this:
- Large pool of candidates to choose from
- Hiring whenever needed
- Ability to hire outside of peak season
- Organized framework for comparing candidates
- Unlimited job postings
A good place to start would be with finding a large pool of candidates. English teachers are scattered around the globe, so it doesn’t make sense to focus on one geographical area. Instead, an online platform or database would be your best bet.
To hire whenever needed, including outside of peak season, you need to leave your hiring processes in place permanently. For large schools, this could mean a dedicated, year-round hiring team. Smaller schools may benefit instead from a dedicated talent recruitment service like Teach Away.
An organized framework for comparing candidates is necessary for cutting through the noise and focusing on what matters. You could use an in-house solution based on spreadsheets and documents, or take advantage of a third party option like Teach Away’s Applicant Tracking System.
To get your school in front of as many teachers as possible, you need unlimited job postings. Thankfully, this is an option, as Teach Away and other platforms allow schools to post as much as needed.
A 12-month subscription can help you build a reliable talent pipeline
Hiring does not have to be a seasonal aspect of your business. Payroll, sales, training, and marketing are year-round, so why not hiring?
Teach Away offers a 12-month recruiting subscription service that helps schools tap new talent throughout the entire year. The package lets you find top teachers at any time.
The recruitment subscription can fill openings immediately. Teachaway facilitates communication across a large network of education professionals, letting you find someone when they are needed.
Annual ongoing hiring means that your hiring process never needs to be shut down or restarted. Instead, you can continue your regular process without interruptions.
Teach Away’s recruitment package offers unlimited job ads. With a single flat rate, you can recruit as many teachers as you need.
You can recruit from teachers around the world. No need to limit your search to one country or region.
And you can still post last-minute job postings if there is a sudden or unexpected need. But if you are hiring regularly, this is not as likely to be a reoccurring problem.
How to subscribe
Subscribing to our annual recruitment package is easy. Simply follow the following six steps:
- Sign up. Contact us if you are interested in trying a demo first.
- Share your story. Each school receives its own custom landing page on our website, allowing you to customize for your brand.
- Spread the word. You can post as many listings as you want, as well as reach out directly to promising candidates.
- Meet amazing candidates. Each candidate profile is filled with important information such as education and previous teaching experience. Get to know them before hiring.
- Find the best fit. Our applicant tracking system lets you sort, filter, and screen candidates to your liking.
- Hire! Theres is no shortage of quality teachers on Teach Away, so you will always find a good match.
Why Teach Away?
Teach Away recruiting offers many tangible benefits compared to other hiring methods.
There are over 25,000 active job seekers in our talent pool. We have one of the largest such networks in the world.
We receive 6X the traffic of other international education career websites, making us the #1 method used by candidates in our industry.
Finally, our streamlined processes mean we offer the lowest cost per hire of any teacher recruitment method. If you hire any other way, you will pay more!
What’s included in your subscription
Subscriptions include everything you need to hire great teachers while spending less time and money. Three core features we offer include:
- Applicant Tracking System
- Vast Talent Pool
- Online Job Fairs
Applicant Tracking System
Our Applicant Tracking System, or ATS, lets you spend less time on paperwork and more time searching for the best candidates.
The ATS puts all your jobs and applicants in one place where you can see and compare them. It helps you be confident in your hiring decisions because of our rich candidate profiles.
You can use the ATS to manage your entire recruitment process from end to end.
Vast Talent Pool
All teachers in our database have voluntarily opted in, meaning they are interested in hearing from schools. And because we have such a large pool of teachers to choose from, you can even find teachers with unique and special expertise or training.
For example, you can filter teachers by language to find candidates who speak your native language. Or you can search by specific training, such as special education, or business english.
Online Job Fairs
Job fairs have always been a great way to find any candidates for any industry. But they are difficult to coordinate if you hire candidates from many different countries.
Online job fairs can be a valuable replacement for in-person options. They have only become more acceptable due to the rising popularity of remote work and video calls over the last few years.
At an online job fair, you can hire highly qualified, pre-screened candidates without the travel expense. You can also expand your reach to meet teachers you might otherwise have missed.
Conclusion: Solve all your hiring problems at once
After reading this article, there are three paths forward for your hiring process:
- Continue on with a traditional model.
- Build your own talent pipeline.
- Subscribe to a recruitment package from Teach Away.
Obviously, the first path is a poor option. It will recreate all the existing headaches you know and hate, like last-minute hiring and a limited pool of applicants.
The second path is admirable, but tough. You probably could cobble together a big talent pool from multiple sources, and organize it by your own efforts. But that would waste valuable time and energy.
Choosing the third option creates the most value for the least effort. Teach Away’s recruitment package cuts through all the typical hiring problems at once, and leaves you with a reliable talent pipeline. Instead of second-guessing your efforts at every turn, you can experience a wealth of possibilities from a huge pool of stellar teachers.