Best Practices for Recruiting Paraprofessionals and Support Staff

Anyone working in education knows it: schools don’t run on teachers alone.

While full-time classroom teachers are essential to student happiness and success, the paraprofessionals, aides, and support staff who keep things running smoothly also play critical roles in creating safe, supportive, and productive learning environments.

In fact, EducationWeek calls paraprofessionals the “backbones of the classroom for their work supporting student learning and wellbeing.” High praise, indeed.

Unfortunately, in a picture-perfect example of education hiring and retention challenges that have become rampant across geographies over the last few years, a 2021 Frontline Education survey found that 35 percent of districts felt vacancies for paraprofessionals are among the most difficult to fill.

Bottom line? Hiring paraprofessionals is both urgent and challenging. This article provides some insights to help you recruit these essential staff members both faster and smarter.

Why Paraprofessionals and Support Staff Matter

Paraprofessionals serve many needs across a healthy, functioning school community. They’re the support staff you’ll find as classroom aides, one-on-one assistants for students who need them, lunchroom monitors, and chaperones.

Support staff also help with essential administrative functions, from clerical tasks to communications roles and much more.

These duties make for excellent support for other team members, ensuring the entire school staff is able to fulfill their responsibilities smoothly. Additionally, paraprofessionals who serve as aides for students with special needs or behavioral challenges have a demonstrable impact on their students’ success.

Despite the undisputed value they bring to schools and classroom, paraprofessionals are more likely to leave the education profession at higher rates than other staff members. Attrition was as much as 23% in the 2021-2022 school year.

Sadly, such high turnover rates can have a profoundly negative impact on students and fellow staff. A lack of consistency and familiarity will make these responsibilities difficult to fulfill well, given that good relationships are so essential to effective execution.

Challenges in Recruiting Paraprofessionals

So why are these roles so difficult to fill, with turnover so high?

Some common challenges in paraprofessional hiring include:

• High competition and low budgets. Demand for paraprofessionals and support staff has grown over the last several years, but many budgets have not. Administrators are forced to search for paras in a highly competitive marketplace where the number of applicants is relatively low, pay can’t always be exceedingly attractive, and many other schools are looking to fill similar roles.
• A gap in awareness of paraprofessionals’ value. Not everyone knows that paraprofessionals have come to fill such an essential role in today’s school systems—or that barriers to entry can be relatively low, making it an attractive role for folks who are new to education.
  
• Time-sensitive needs. Some administrators are under heavy pressure to fill these roles quickly, whether it’s to fill a mid-year vacancy, meet the requirements of a particular student’s IEP, or alleviate the overburden on other teachers and staff members. This urgency can lead to imperfect hires, which leads to yet more turnover—so the same problems come back around again.
• Credential or training requirements vary. Depending on your state and the particular job functions a paraprofessional role needs to fulfill, the minimum requirements can vary. Taking the time to establish these and search for talent who check all the boxes isn’t easy.
  
• The intensity of the day-to-day. As with full-time teachers, paras and aides may face high-pressure or tense moments each day. Working with special needs students, supporting busy or crowded classrooms, and settling into the dynamics of a team aren’t easy. Finding candidates with the right motivation and real passion for education is essential to paraprofessional and teacher hiring success.

Many of these challenges require thoughtful planning from the moment a vacancy makes itself known to administrators. Taking the time to really reflect on the job duties that will need doing and the type of person your team can benefit from will pay back in spades.

We get it: that sounds like a lot of “hurry up to slow down,” and more often than not, you’re just in a hurry! But, with practice, these reflections will happen more quickly—and your hiring outcomes will prove their value.

Best Practices for Recruiting Paraprofessionals Quickly & Effectively

In the interest of reflection and planning, take a look at these best practices when it comes to hiring paraprofessionals and support staff. Keep them in your back pocket and revisit them to help you knock your next open posting out of the park.

The Risk of Rushed Hiring

The very first impression you’ll make on candidates comes from your job description. When you assemble the role, be thoughtful and intentional about every word so you can put your best foot forward and offer the transparency potential applicants will be looking for.

For example:

• Focus on your school’s mission, how this role will impact it, and the value you see in a paraprofessional’s contributions to student success and school culture.
• Be transparent about pay, hours, and requirements. Many applicants will simply skip job openings that don’t include this information.
  
• Use plain language to describe responsibilities, and be clear about minimum qualifications as well as support and development opportunities you offer your staff.

2. Streamline the Application Process

A good candidate experience precludes a lengthy, repetitive application process. To improve your odds of completed applications and engaged candidates, be mindful of how your application feels to the person on the other end of your portal.

Good best practices include:

• Keep it short. Avoid multi-step portals, especially for entry-level roles. You want to invite people to get their foot in the door so you can get to know them better.
• Allow mobile-friendly applications. Lots of candidates hunt and apply for jobs on their phones these days, but lots of platforms are not optimized for this type of user experience.
• Offer pre-recorded video interviews to cut time-to-screening. Candidates are excited to receive an invitation for a first interview—but that excitement fades if they need to wait days to get it accomplished. On demand interviews solve this problem.
• Integrate with your ATS to minimize hoops for both your applicants and your HR staff. Keeping candidates’ information in a connected, streamlined system is also the best way to respect the privacy of their information.

3. Leverage Local Pipelines

You can get the word out about how important and rewarding a paraprofessional career can be by partnering with local institutions and communications that already serve excellent future applicants.

Wherever possible, you should:

• Partner with local colleges, workforce boards, and local training programs. These are wonderful places to find applicants building the skills your team needs to thrive.
• Recruit parents or neighbors who already know your school. Often, those who are already invested in your community will make the most compassionate and impactful paras.
• Offer pathways to full-time teaching roles where possible. Providing education and certification opportunities that will develop paraprofessional applicants can be an attractive benefit for new candidates, and help you keep top staff within your school system, even if they grow into a new type of role.

4. Move Fast, But Stay Structured

Consistent, well-organized teacher hiring strategies always deliver the best results, and the same is true of support staff hiring. Make sure you find the processes and focus areas that work for your team and your candidate experience.

Keep these in mind:

• Use structured interviews to ensure fairness and consistency. Video interviews for teacher recruitment can help with this, especially if you’re leveraging consistent questions and platforms.
• Leverage AI interview summaries to capture key insights from your interviews that are objective and can be shared across your hiring team.
• Automate scheduling and use video interviews to reduce back-and-forth. This can enable applicants to participate in the process meaningfully, whether they’re working late shifts or busy with a family at home.
• Use scoring rubrics to make quick, quality hiring decisions. A consistent, focused interview structure and evaluation process will serve you—and your candidates—well.

5. Showcase Support & Growth Opportunities

Paraprofessionals and support staff, like teachers, deserve to be rewarded for a job well done and invited to thrive in your school community. This means enabling their ongoing learning and aiding in their development, so that future growth opportunities may more readily present themselves.

You’ll improve the attractiveness and retention rate of your paraprofessional roles if you:

• Highlight professional development opportunities. Inviting paras and aides to join continuing education efforts alongside full-time teachers is an essential way to give them new tools and show them how important they are to your school.
• Mention mentorship programs or pathways to teacher certification. Putting peer support and professional development on rails will make your school more attractive to applicants who are interested in long-term stays.
• Include testimonials or spotlights on current paraprofessionals. You can embed videos or quotes into role descriptions or your district or school board’s careers page to showcase just how engaged and important your current paras are for your team.

How Technology Can Help Speed Up & Improve Hiring

As you can probably tell, many of these best practices can be significantly aided by modern teacher hiring solutions.

For streamlined teacher and paraprofessional recruitment, consider adding tools like these to your toolbox:

• Video interviewing tools to reduce time-to-hire. By eliminating the need for travel and other in-person logistics, you can greatly accelerate hiring timelines and improve convenience for everyone involved in the hiring process.
• Scheduling software to eliminate back-and-forth. Giving candidates access to book time on a centralized calendar will make phone tag a thing of the past for your recruiters.
• AI interview notes to save hiring teams hours. You can use these to record essential reference materials in no time at all.
• ATS or other integrations that centralize workflows and reduce human error. Keeping all this information in one place is a privacy and security-minded best practice we should all embrace by now.

Checklist: Hiring Paraprofessionals Efficiently Without Sacrificing Quality

To sum up, make sure your paraprofessional recruiting strategies include all the following components:

• Clear job postings with transparent details that showcase what makes your school unique
• Mobile-optimized, fast application experience
• Local recruitment partnerships
• Structured interviews and consistent scoring processes
• Top-notch recruiting tech to save time and improve outcomes
• Strong onboarding and career path messaging

Missing something? That’s okay—now you know where to begin! Contact us at interviewstream any time, and we’ll be happy to help walk you through some great next steps.

Hiring for Heart and Skill

Remember: when you’re hiring a paraprofessional, you aren’t filling just any position. You’re bringing in someone who will have a direct daily impact on students and fellow staff members.

When you invest the attention required to hire thoughtfully without drawing out that time-to-hire any longer, your students win. And so do you.

How do you do it? Lean into tools and processes that let you focus on what matters most: the people.

Along the way, if you’d like to learn more about modern hiring practices for K-12 leaders, check out this white paper.

About The Author

Monique Mahler is the CEO of interviewstream. She is an avid researcher of facts, a self proclaimed marketing geek, and an equestrian in her spare time.