Reach for the Stars: Hiring Tools to Help You Hire Star Teachers

Why are teachers so important? They are a backbone of our society. They are role models to our youth and they have the power to further develop our country, socially and economically.

William Arthur Ward stated, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

We are in need of great teachers – demand is high while supply remains low. In 2024, we are expected to be short over 100,000 teachers with a 5% increase in teacher turnover rate. In this landscape, districts are facing difficult recruitment challenges.

When faced with these challenges, districts must have effective hiring strategies and tools in place. They are essential to attracting, assessing, and retaining star teachers, the teachers our students need and deserve, who will make a significant impact.

Understanding the Importance of Hiring Tools in Education

Public schools reported too few candidates applying to open teaching positions (70 and 61 percent, respectively) and an overall lack of qualified candidates (66 and 52 percent, respectively) as the top two hiring challenges entering the 2023-24 school year.

Obviously, this creates a competitive teacher hiring market where time is of the essence. When time is not on your side, you need to have the right tools in place… Tools designed and specifically tailored to hiring in education.

Types of Hiring Tools & Key Features of Effective Hiring Tools

There are a variety of tools available in the market today, designed specifically for the education sector, that will help you overcome your teacher hiring challenges. Schools that use innovative recruitment tools have a distinct advantage over those that don’t. Using HR tech tools saves time and gets job offers to top candidates first. Take a look at all the possibilities:

1. Applicant Tracking Systems: Your applicant tracking system (ATS) is the powerhouse of your recruitment tech. In your ATS, you can see all your hiring data in one platform, which is why your hiring technology should be integrated with your ATS. Integrations allow you to invite candidates with a click of a button, see where all your candidates are in the hiring process in real-time, easily share information with colleagues, and report on candidates all on one platform. interviewstream has partnered with Frontline Education, applytoeducation, and PowerSchool to streamline your team’s hiring process to find the best candidates quickly and efficiently, expanding your candidate pool and providing a great candidate experience.

    
   Tip: interviewstream also has an openAPI, allowing you to integrate with any system you use. Reach out here to discuss a custom integration.

2. On Demand Video Interview Screening: One way screening video interviews allow you to screen more teacher candidates, and do it faster. They allow your candidates to interview anywhere, anytime, from any device and offer a 58% reduction in time-to-hire.
3. Live Video Interviewing: By implementing live virtual interviews, school districts can save time while eliminating unnecessary travel costs, interviewing candidates from any location. Plus live interviews can be formatted to work with any interview style: 1:1 interviews, panel interviews, group interviews, or round-robin style interviews.
4. Interview Scheduling Tools: Interview scheduling tools allow teacher candidates to schedule with a click of a button, eliminating the headache of back-and-forth email scheduling. In fact, most interviews are scheduled within 24 hours of the invite. As an added bonus, interviewing scheduling tools can also be used for hiring events. Allowing for large groups of candidates to schedule interview times with hiring team members in-person or virtually.
5. AI Hiring Tools: AI tools have taken the world by storm, saving hiring teams time in every stage of the hiring process. interviewstream’s AI Recruiting Assistant allows hiring teams to retain the human element of recruiting while taking advantage of the efficiencies built into AI. From creating job descriptions and interview questions to social media and email communication, AI tools streamline your process and ultimately provide more efficient and effective teacher hiring.
6. Data-Driven Analytics: When you are in the race to scoop up the best teachers, you need to be sure you are getting it right. Data analytics tools give you actionable data about your hiring process, candidate interviews, and hiring team so you can adjust where needed and stay at the top of your hiring game.
7. Onboarding Tools: Using a tool specifically designed for onboarding will help your school simplify the onboarding process and improve your teacher retention rates by up to 93%. Onboarding tools cover everything from new hire document collection, to orientation, to post-hire feedback to improve your process. And when the teacher turnover rate is ever increasing, you need all the tools at your disposal to retain teachers where possible.
8. Skill Assessment Tools: If you want to find the best teachers, you have to ask the right questions. The best teachers have the right combination of hard and soft skills needed to influence our youth. Utilizing interview guide builder allows you to structure your interview and choose questions that assess the skills you are looking for in your next great teacher hire, along with guides to assess those skills.

Best Practices for Utilizing Hiring Tools

Let’s take a deep dive into how you can utilize these hiring tools in your process to hire star teachers by following an example case:

Riverside Elementary School needs to fill an open 3rd grade teacher position, quickly. On Monday, Cheryl, the school principal, opens up AI Recruiting Assistant and Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, and with a few clicks has a full job description to post everywhere to find the perfect teacher candidate. By Wednesday, she had an inbox filled with six excellent candidates.

She takes 10 minutes to send out a quick screening video invite to the candidates, with three questions pulled from the interview builder list. On Thursday, she had responses from all six candidates. She sent a quick shares the interviews via email with her hiring team to assess and evaluate the videos. By Friday, the team narrowed the list down to their three top candidates based on the screening interviews.

Cheryl then spent 5 minutes sending out invites from interview scheduler to set up live video interviews for all three candidates. By Friday, EOD, Cheryl had scheduled all live video interviews for the following week.

After completion of the live video interviews, she used AI to send a quick thank you email and update her candidates on the hiring timeline. By Friday, the whole hiring team had evaluated the candidates and agreed on their top choice, Sarah. An offer was made and accepted that day, but the process didn’t end there.

Riverside Elementary School already had onboarding videos set up in their system, so they could speed the process along and spend more time training Sarah and building strong work relationships. Sarah was excited to get started with her new class and also completed 30-60-90 day feedback video interviews.

Future Trends and Innovations in Hiring Tools for Education

Technology is a huge factor in overcoming the teacher shortage. From advancements in AI-driven tools to the new trend of hiring certified virtual teachers to teach live lessons to in-person groups of students, innovative technology plays a huge role in the success of our education system.

Of course, technology is not the only factor in attracting and retaining great teachers but it makes a huge impact. Districts need to stay ahead of the curve and be willing to educate themselves on the new technology and not be afraid to implement new tools. Out with the old and in with the new!

interviewstream has a long list of tools that can be integrated with your ATS, which will help you combat your teacher hiring challenges.

Check out our New Caney Independent School District case study to see for yourself how we can transform your hiring process and help you hire great teachers for your school.

Talk to an interviewstream expert today and start filling your school with star teachers, the teachers that shine a bright light in the lives of your students.

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.