When the challenge of staff recruitment is severe enough to impact your business, it’s time to assess and change what you’re doing to generate inquiries from qualified candidates. It is not enough to have a presence on Indeed and other job posting sites, have a booth at job fairs and have a basic “Careers” page on your website.
Use these strategies to step up your staff recruitment efforts.
- Mine the gold within your current staff. Though you may know a lot about your target market for teachers, do you know what it was about you that made them want to work for you? Ask them! What are all the ways they learned about you? What were the key factors that made them apply? What did they like best when they interviewed and learned more about the company and position?
- Choose your marketing channels carefully. You cannot assume your best candidates are on one social media platform, looking at only certain job posting sites, or looking for opportunities only in child care. Carefully analyze every recruitment effort, looking for the payback (in qualified candidates) on each marketing spend you try as a staff recruitment channel. Focus only on those with the best ROI of your time and resources. Drop the rest.
- Maximize your website as a staff recruitment tool. Many ECE companies have websites that do a good job of guiding potential enrollments toward inquiry, and yet, they have only one simple page to recruit teachers and other staff. Your “Join Our Team” or “Careers” page should be robust, engaging, and have multiple elements that will convert qualified teacher candidates into applications. Post videos of your teachers sharing what working for you means to them and what kind of support they get from you. Speak to the professional development they can get, the culture they will find, the unique benefits they will get from joining your team. In addition to photos of teachers happily engaged with children, post testimonials from parents about what a teacher meant to their child and family.
Though multiple factors affect staff shortages and recruitment challenges, it’s smart marketing to maximize what you can control.
For an example of an ECE website that does a good job appealing to potential teachers, email me with the words, Staff Recruitment Website Page, in the subject line.
Julie Wassom
The Child Care Marketing Expert and Coach
Marketing and Sales Speaker/Consultant/Author
303-910-3083
julie@juliewassom.com
www.juliewassom.com
