The Joy of Hiring Teachers, Part 1: Recruitment and Hiring

We are nearing that time of the year again when we spend time looking at our teacher needs for the following school year. Most school boards and administrators are certainly happy if their teachers come back year over year to ensure continuity of leadership and fewer recruitment challenges. However, it is not always feasible to have high retention, especially in smaller schools.

This poses a lot of questions about how to source and recruit strong teachers. We want teachers that have a desire to learn and a desire to teach. We want teachers that are team players. We want teachers that care about Godly values. These desired qualities require boards and administrators to be diligent in their hiring processes to ensure that they hire qualified candidates.

Part one of this series will focus on recruitment and hiring. The second part of this series will focus on onboarding, evaluating, and retaining teachers.

Determining Qualifications

The most important piece of a recruiting process is to determine what qualifications you want in the person. This requires you to look at your school and teaching team and see if there are gaps that the next teacher can help fill. If you have a very experienced team, you may be open to a beginner. If you have a very young team, you may want to add stability by attempting to find someone with some teaching experience. The school board should also look at character traits that are important to the mission and vision of the school. The school board and principal need to spend time discussing what they should be looking for in a teacher candidate. Planning prior to the recruitment process promotes intentionality in team building.

Contacting the Candidate

The second part of the recruiting process is to determine a process by which the board will recruit. Will they call the candidate directly? Or should they contact their minister or parents? There may not be an exact formula for how this works, based on many factors such as the age of the candidate. Statistically, schools are likely to recruit fairly young adults for these roles. In that case, there is much to be said about contacting the candidate’s minister and parent. This accomplishes a couple of things. It shows parents and churches that they value their input. Reaching out to the parents and ministers is also a way to involve the people that this young person will likely go to for counsel as they make a decision. In some situations, it may help a board learn that maybe they should not pursue a candidate any further, based on information that they receive.

Following any preliminary calls, the board should then call the candidate to gauge their interest in a teaching position. Importantly, the purpose of this call should be to gauge their interest in completing an interview. If the candidate expresses interest, there is no guarantee that the school will offer the position. In fact, a school that offers a position in this way sets itself up for challenging times. The offer should be for an interview if the candidate is interested.

Conducting the Interview

The board should do all that it can do to have an in-person interview with the candidate up to and including compensation for transportation to help them visit the school community. There may be circumstances in which this interview will need to happen virtually. If the interview is virtual, there should be some things set in place ahead of time, such as ensuring that the panel of interviewers and the candidate all have their cameras on so they can observe one another.

The board should provide abundant clarity on how the interview will be conducted. Each school will determine who will be part of the interview. Some schools may have a personnel subcommittee, and some schools may have all of the board and the principal present. The candidate should be given the number of people that are going to be present and who they are. Introductions should also take place at the beginning of the interview so that the candidate knows exactly who they are addressing. This interview is a time in which the candidate is also evaluating the school and community to ensure that it is a good fit for them as well. The interview panel should provide adequate time for the candidate to ask questions. The goal of the interview is to ensure that the candidate is a good fit for the school and that the school is a good fit for the candidate. If either of these criteria are not met, the candidate and the school should not move forward in the hiring process.

Following Up

Following a successful interview, the interview committee should ensure that the candidate knows exactly what the next steps are. They should be given a general time frame of when they should hear back from someone with follow-up from the interview. The candidate that is not chosen should never be ghosted. They should be contacted and thanked for their time and participation in the process.

Collecting and Processing References

After an offer has been accepted, the board needs to ensure that it has collected the proper paperwork for their personnel file. All offers should be contingent on reference checks and background checks if they are required or implemented voluntarily.

The board should be diligent to attain 3 references that are not related to the candidate. One of these references could be the ministry. The other two should be connections to the candidate such as employers or direct supervisors, if they have had a job. For younger candidates it could also include former schoolteachers or mentors as well.

The board should have a standard list of questions for these references ahead of time. These references could be attained by phone or a form online. If references are gathered by phone, the person calling these references should mark the date and time that the call was made and take notes on their form for the personnel file. This ensures that there are never any allegations that the board did not complete due diligence in the hiring process. This same process should be conducted whether the teacher is from the church that sponsors the school or is a complete stranger.

Preparing for Onboarding

Once these steps are completed, a final follow-up call should be made to the candidate to let them know that all checks have come back clear and that they will proceed with the onboarding process. This would be a good time for the recruiter to discuss any training or other onboarding items they would like to have the candidate complete prior to arrival. They can discuss arrival dates as well.

When these details are completed ahead of time, it frees the principal and board from last-minute emergencies when they are working to get school started for the year. This call should also be a time to connect the teacher with their principal or direct supervisor.

Conclusion

Good hiring practices are a vital part of the process of staffing the school. Hiring right also has strong connection to employee retention. Our first impression is the most important impression. We do well to plan ahead for these crucial decisions.

While these practical suggestions are not universally required or the only way to conduct hiring, the school board is most effective when their hiring process is determined prior to the start of their recruitment efforts. Having a planned recruitment process also gives transparency to patrons and home churches as to how a board is sourcing their candidates that will be directly impacting the family and the local church.