Streamlining Teacher Hiring: Save Time and Confront K-12 Hiring Challenges

In communities across the US and Canada, schools are struggling to staff open roles for teachers in every grade and subject. While this shortage began years ago, it was accelerated dramatically by the pandemic, and as the rest of the world has mostly returned to normal, many school administrators are still stuck in a crisis.

For those admins, the race to fill positions quickly without compromising the quality of hire is more intense than ever. And that goes for full-time and substitute, or supply teacher, roles.

While higher education bodies and other agencies are getting creative to help fill the teacher pipeline with more talent and draw in more future educators, admins are getting creative to extend their reach in the current talent pool. Fortunately, technology is well-poised to help—with features like video interviewing, automated scheduling, and more—by making the search as smooth as possible for everyone involved.

The Challenges of Teacher Recruitment

Predictions forecast roughly 225,000 teacher vacancies in the United States this year. The number is huge, and it’s backed up by admin sentiment: 83% of superintendents cite finding qualified educators as a leading challenge for their districts.

The problem persists in Canada as well. A 2023-2024 Annual Ontario School Survey reported that 24% of elementary schools and 35% of secondary schools experience daily shortages of teaching staff.

The frustration is significant for full-time roles, but hiring substitute/supply teachers—often on very short notice—is a whole other problem.

All of the effort required to confront these challenges places a significant administrative burden on schools, districts, and school boards, especially within their HR teams. From keeping track of open roles and prioritizing their urgency to reviewing applications and communicating with candidates, there just isn’t enough time in the day. Or the year, for that matter, considering it takes an average of 119 days to fill an open teacher role in a public educational institution.

Modern teacher hiring solutions are one way these teams can work smarter and faster.

Why Speed Matters in Teacher Hiring

When forced to grapple with an unfilled teacher vacancy, schools must make difficult compromises. Whether it’s in larger class sizes, canceled course offerings, or asking existing staff to cover more teaching responsibilities, the consequences can be significant.

Studies consistently show that larger class sizes have an adverse effect on student success and teacher retention. A lack of course offerings can make a difference in the trajectory of students’ adult lives and careers, leaving untapped potential on the proverbial table in formative years. Teacher burnout is a huge problem that’s only getting worse as educators are asked to wear more hats in their classrooms.

So while there’s not enough time for admins in charge of hiring, there’s also no time to waste. How are they supposed to move with speed, while reaching wide networks of potential applicants and ensuring top-quality placements in their schools?

Tech Solutions for Faster Hiring

This is where the right software, purpose-built to enable streamlined teacher recruitment, can help in a big way.

In particular, many admins have discovered the benefits of video interviews for teacher recruitment. This essential tool for extending your reach to a broader talent pool can change the game entirely. And when you add time-saving features like automated interview scheduling and AI recruiting tools, the difference is remarkable.

Video Interviewing

By offering video interviewing as a part of their recruitment strategy, K-12 administrators and hiring teams can extend their reach to new talent pools outside of their district/board and minimize travel spending. Moreover, in states/territories with licensure compacting, searching outside of the area could mean an incredible increase in the number of qualified candidates.

Live video interviews during later stages of the recruiting process mean HR, admins, and candidates can chat in real time, with less time wasted on logistics and fewer scheduling restrictions. Earlier in the process, one-way video interviews offer a simplified, yet personalized, screening step that eliminates phone scheduling and presents an accurate and insightful first impression of candidates.

Remote participation for far-flung candidates may be the only way to reach top teaching talent in this educator shortage and in the internet age.

Automated Scheduling

Every recruiter has their pet peeves about this role. For many, and across industries, one of the biggest comes with the hassle of facilitating circular conversations about interview scheduling. It’s a common frustration: going back and forth between hiring managers, administrators, and candidates to try and find a mutually available window to have a simple, but essential conversation.

Automated interview scheduling can completely eliminate this time-wasting exercise, resulting in improved time to hire and a much better candidate experience. In the midst of a talent shortage in the education sector, moving quickly and leaving candidates feeling seen and respected is essential.

Teams can use software like interviewstream to integrate with school and staff calendars, allow candidates to opt in for openings via self-service links, and move faster on the way toward hiring.

AI-Generated Interview Summaries

Another time-saving measure comes in the form of AI in recruitment. While we don’t recommend letting artificial intelligence read through resumes and screen candidates on its own, it can be a force multiplier for effective human recruiters looking to move faster and do more with less time.

A prime example comes in interview summaries. These outputs help busy K-12 recruiters share insights about each candidate with colleagues across their district/board, enabling more informed hiring decisions, greater collaboration, and a simplified experience that doesn’t require everyone to watch the same recordings over and over.

This approach also helps standardize the interview and evaluation processes, ensuring fairness and consistency across recruiting and candidate experiences.

Real Results in Real Schools

These aren’t just ideas; these are modern recruiting strategies delivering real results for K-12 districts and recruiters across the US. Here are two of their stories.

Harford County Public Schools | Maryland

Administrators in Harford County Public Schools, a Maryland-based public school system, wanted to get ahead of the curve with recruiting technology. Eager to extend their reach to more teacher candidates and save time for their HR team amidst a chronic talent shortage, they started using interviewstream to take advantage of video interviewing and onboarding options.

Their goal was to bring in and retain more talent, without sacrificing quality of life for their recruiting staff by overextending their capacity.

The results speak for themselves: a 33% time savings for recruiters per interview, a more personalized and branded experience for candidates, and connections with candidates they may never have met without remote participation.

Tigard-Tualatin School District | Oregon

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Tigard-Tualatin School District in Oregon serves more than 12,000 students in the suburban Portland area. Their admins were eager to screen more candidates per position, and they thought they could do it—if only it took less time to screen each one. Existing time constraints meant they only had the capacity to interview a few candidates per position, and they found it wasn’t enough to bring in the best possible candidate for each role.

Tigard-Tualatin discovered interviewstream and decided to adopt the software, with a particular goal of leveraging it to improve their recruiting strategy at hiring fairs. These are challenging events where a lot of people move through and make applications; recruiters are under pressure to keep track of each one. But with interviewstream, Tigard-Tualatin staff are able to use a QR code to invite candidates to complete self-guided, one-way interviews for screening purposes right there at the fair. Afterward, recruiters can quickly evaluate completed interviews and align to open roles in the district.

As a result of this creative implementation, Tigard-Tualatin has increased the number of candidates they screen per position from less than 5 to an average of 13. They’ve also saved 100 hours of administrative work per year for their recruiters.

Best Practices for Implementing Hiring Tech

The evidence is clear, but the real hurdle is making change with it. How can K-12 recruiters implement modern recruiting software and quickly make a difference in their district/boards’ hiring effectiveness?

Here are some tips to get started:

• Evaluate your unique needs: Where are the biggest gaps in your recruiting process? Common pitfalls can include excessive time-to-hire, high turnover in new hires’ first year, recruiter burnout, and low interview completion rates. Calculating your district or school board’s performance in these categories can help you identify your most essential needs for HR tech.
• Find the right software: Knowing what sort of tools you’ll need, the next step is choosing them! You’ll want to evaluate recruiting software options for things like: a wealth of available features to help you grow in sophistication; integration with your existing HR systems; high standards around data security; robust support offerings; and strong onboarding materials to help you make the most of your investment.
• Getting staff bought in and onboarded: Software is only as impactful as it is useful, and that means your recruiting team will need to begin leveraging your recruiting platform quickly and effectively. Build enthusiasm by showcasing examples of success in your chosen platform, offering plenty of hands-on training, and letting recruiters see and understand the candidate experience, too.
• Set specific goals: As Tigard-Tualatin did, you should have specific ideas in mind for your first use cases in your new software. Whether it’s at hiring fairs, in the screening stage, interview scheduling, or AI assistance, lean into one scenario heavily to help your team get comfortable with the software and see fast, satisfying results. If you’ve chosen your platform wisely, it’ll be easy to take advantage of more and wider opportunities to improve over time.

Start Streamlining Teacher Hiring in 2025

As you look to further improve your teacher hiring strategies this year, despite a widespread teacher shortage, make sure technology is a major part of the conversation. Teacher hiring solutions like video interviews, on-demand video screenings, and automated interview scheduling can save your team an incredible amount of time—freeing you up to focus on finding the most amazing educators out there to fill your district/board’s open roles.

interviewstream is here to help. With a wide range of features covering all those time-savers and more, it’s sure to make a difference in your time-to-hire, reach, candidate experience, and team collaboration.

To learn more, check out our eBook: Confronting the K-12 Teacher Shortage with Modern Hiring Practices. It has the insights you need to help you evaluate opportunities to improve your processes—and get started on the road to closing those vacancies.

About The Author

Drew Whitehurst is the Director of Marketing, RevOps, and Product Strategy at interviewstream. He's been with the company since 2014 working in client services and marketing. He is an analytical thinker, coffee enthusiast, and hobbyist at heart.