If you are involved in any way with recruiting teachers and other K-12 staff, then you know just how challenging and essential this work can be.
Some districts have finally found relief from the staff shortages exacerbated by the pandemic. Yet others are still struggling to fill teacher vacancies for the 2024-25 school year, with a few shifting to bold strategies that even involve recruiting teachers from abroad. Amidst these patterns, technology continues to evolve and impact the roles of both teachers and recruiting teams.
Which strategies work best to engage teaching candidates and — more importantly — keep them in schools for the long haul?
Red Rover is sitting down with recruitment professionals in different school districts to learn how they are navigating the challenges of modern-day teacher recruitment. In this article, Jamie West, Instructional Recruitment Partner at Lake County Schools (LCS) explains some of the strategies her district uses to find candidates within their community and across the country.
Becoming a resource for recruits
When LCS finds a quality candidate, they begin working with them very early on in the recruitment process. “Post-pandemic, recruitment has become much more challenging in education than in other areas,” West reflected. “We see career-changers leaving the private sector… eager to support student learning and teaching, but unsure how to do it.”
LCS tries to be with them at every step.
Moving candidates through the hiring process
West and her team often focus on supporting candidates in understanding where they may be a great fit within the district and how they might qualify for a given role. In this approach, LCS hosts events like their “Become A Teacher” series throughout the school year to explain things like the credentialing process. But even here, West still finds that some candidates have misinformation about the path forward.
“As a recruiter, I know what the long, big-picture path is into a particular position,” West explained. “But I also need to understand: What has this candidate already done that might shorten their path?”
Each candidate’s journey before applying to a role with LCS is unique, and their next steps may be just as individualized. For West, it’s all about customizing each candidate’s next steps forward to not only ensure they can become qualified, but that they also have clarity on what to do next.
This upfront work pays off for LCS, too, getting candidates qualified for open roles as soon as possible to fill in vacancies. West shared, “We want to make [things like] teaching certification as quick, effortless, and painless as possible!”
Seeing long-term potential in substitutes
LCS hires and trains all of its own guest staff, so to maximize their investments in recruiting, West and her team also design integrated retention strategies for substitute teachers, and they are thankful for the support of local organizations like Addition Financial, which sponsors the district’s substitute programming.
Here are just a few of the more effective strategies that create a warm and positive substitute staff experience:
- Offer an annual substitute teacher “boot camp” for both new and returning guest staff to learn about LCS policies, basic expectations, and protocols, and meet fellow substitute teachers.
- Ensure substitute staff receive perks that other teachers do, including discounts at local restaurants or shops in the area.
- Host a “Sub Of The Year” program, where schools can nominate up to 3 of their regularly scheduled guest staff and celebrate winners within the district and local community.
Since many substitute teachers in LCS are also working on their teaching credentials and qualifications for full-time roles, these engagement strategies also help keep the district’s pipeline robust.
Leveraging AI to communicate
Like many districts, West cites using AI resources embedded in platforms like Canva or Facebook to market open positions. However, LCS also leverages AI to support drafting emails to candidates for substitute teaching in the district’s applicant tracking system. This helps manage the large volume of communications West and her team send each week.
Though AI has proven useful to LCS, West does approach the technology with caution. Florida’s student data privacy laws and her district’s guidelines around technology tools make embracing AI complex, she explained. As such, her team has adopted the mindset of learning little by little about these tools, looking to neighboring districts as models for what works (and what doesn’t).
(Geo)Cashing in on location
LCS often leans into the benefits of its unique location when recruiting teachers. The community offers a small-town feel while also being commutable from a major city. This blend is an attractor for candidates, West finds, especially with families of current staff and parents of enrolled children among those applying to open roles.
Looking for candidates locally
LCS hosts a variety of local, community-centered events to spread the word about open positions and what it’s like to work at LCS. A favorite example is what West calls a “reverse job fair” where applicants and potential candidates have the opportunity to meet principals at LCS campuses and ask them questions. These meet-and-greet sessions, held virtually throughout the school year, have been helpful for substitute teachers seeking to become full-time educators and caregivers looking for ways to get more involved in their schools.
Even as Florida itself undergoes rapid growth, West hopes to adapt such that the district keeps this strong sense of interconnectedness and community that candidates appreciate.
Expanding the search beyond state borders
LCS uses strategies like geofencing to connect with potential candidates across state borders. Geofencing involves targeting digital advertisements to specific regions or audiences. LCS might focus outreach on teachers who live in states like Michigan or Ohio, where teaching credentials easily translate to meet Florida’s requirements.
LCS also cited the value of university partnerships and digital tools like Handshake that help the district connect with future teachers before they graduate.
Relying on robust data and analytics
For West, technology must have the right data and analytics to support recruiting and retention. With substitute teachers, LCS has seen immense success in using modern K-12 workforce management tools like Red Rover.
“Nothing compares to Red Rover Absence Management,” West said. “It has been fantastic and so successful when it comes to its analytics, the data, and its substitute communication channels that did not exist [in LCS] before.”
Data isn’t the only benefit of Red Rover in West’s view: “Our subs just love how easy [Red Rover] is to use. Someone who is not tech savvy can easily do it.”
Even with supportive solutions like Red Rover in place, West finds herself juggling multiple platforms to stay on top of all of her work, from Google tools to the applicant tracking system to customer relationship management solutions (also called CRMs). “As long as these pieces keep talking together,” West said, “I’ll be able to navigate recruitment tasks.”
Staying focused and selective with recruiting technology
Technology has changed the landscape of recruiting in education. While it certainly creates new opportunities for finding top talent, it can also be overwhelming and is not without its challenges. In her reflections, West noted the challenge of taking in the big picture in recruitment to help teams stay responsive and ahead of the curve. She explained, “We talk all day long as recruiters — so it’s hard for us to slow down and create the overall strategy that drives the recruiting process.” She encouraged HR teams to take space, sit with the data gathered, and use it to guide recruitment strategies, making them even better — even amidst the chaos of the school year.
West says one of a recruiter’s greatest resources is their peers, and encourages others to do what she does and gather monthly with other K-12 recruiters to talk about the strategies and resources they have tried and had success with.
“Find other recruiters and befriend them,” West said. “We all have the same job and the same goals. Stay with the trends and stay focused on those goals!”
You can start by reading other posts in our recruiter series, here!
Ready to level up your district’s retention and recruitment game? Learn more about how Red Rover Hiring can ease your workload while cultivating candidates’ excitement about your open roles!
