Improving recruitment in education, Tony Brookes

Improving recruitment in education

Tony Brookes describes the benefits of online recruitment systems

Recruitment can be a challenge in any sector, but particularly so for those in the education sector seeking teaching or support staff. Finding personnel who, as well as possessing the appropriate qualifications and experience, also fit a particular educational establishment’s culture and ethos can be difficult.

Furthermore, as well as the more general rules governing recruitment, the education sector has specific compliance requirements. This is one of several factors in the increasing popularity of online recruitment systems that help to streamline the recruitment process for both candidate and recruiter, while ensuring that schools comply with relevant legislation as well as their own internal reporting requirements.

A good online recruitment system offers schools the ability to automate and centralise the hiring process. This saves time as well as money, allowing them to recruit and retain top talent, increasing the quality of hire while reducing reliance on recruitment agencies. It improves the experience of candidates and, at the same time, builds the organisation’s brand as well as aligning recruitment activity with key goals and priorities, all while offering a low cost of ownership and a measurable return on investment – also known as ‘good value for money’!

Policies such as the requirement for diversity and gender equality can be enforced by configuring the system to strip out inappropriate information prior to short-listing, whereas removing this kind of information manually before a recruiter sees it can be time-consuming and inaccurate.

Some systems also provide features such as a checklist module so that recruiters can score against specific criteria to ensure hires are made with no bias, and all notes regarding candidates are made online, and so easily retrieved at a later date. The best of these systems can speed up the process considerably, and also make time-consuming administration tasks such as the completion of year-end forms on the gender and ethnicity of candidates who have applied, been interviewed, or recruited, very much faster and more accurate.

Those responsible for educational recruitment particularly like the automation that the systems provide which include: the ability to post vacancies automatically to a large number of appropriate job boards, eliminating the need for expensive advertising; provision of online application forms and online short-listing; automatic communication with candidates (for example the acknowledgement of receipt of application forms); the option of video interviewing; ‘onboarding’ where employment contracts are generated automatically and everyone in the organisation is advised automatically that a new recruit will be joining; communicating via SMS as well

Tony Brookes.

as email; the building of a ‘talent pool’ for candidates who may be suitable for future roles; and automatic background and criminal records checking.

Loughborough Endowed Schools (LES) is one educational organisation that has benefited from using an online recruitment system. LES is a charitable foundation consisting of four independent schools with more than 2000 students and it employs 600 staff in both teaching and non-teaching roles, with a mix of full and part-time posts.

Richard Smeeton, IT director at Loughborough Endowed Schools, took the lead to implement an online recruitment system to help manage the volume of applications and address the high cost of press advertising and recruitment fees. Vacancy Filler was selected and has proved particularly effective in recruiting IT and professional posts, saving a considerable amount of time for the hiring managers whilst enhancing the candidate experience.

Managers found the selection of the right candidates was made much easier by Vacancy Filler. Applicant communications are integrated into the short-listing, testing and interviewing processes and expired vacancies are removed automatically. Prior to deploying the Vacancy Filler software, all recruitment was paper-based.

Some posts, by their nature, tend to have a fairly high turnover, particularly casual staff positions. As a prestigious employer, LES often received a high volume of applications, and this combination often generated a great deal of paperwork for the human resources team. Using the integrated job board service has significantly increased the number of applicants for professional roles, providing listings to multiple job boards for the same fee previously paid just for one.

Vacancy Filler provides access to 20 general job boards and ten sector specific ones with its integrated service. In addition to reducing recruitment agency costs, this has meant that the number of high-calibre applicants has increased.

Financial projections and a business case prepared in the early stages of planning for the system indicated payback was achievable within 12 months. This was delivered even though print advertising was maintained for senior roles. Teaching posts continue to be advertised nationally, but local press advertising and job board expenditure is significantly reduced. Agency costs have also fallen sharply with at least one finder’s fee avoided. Maintaining such savings could not only pay for the system, but deliver ongoing and sustainable reductions to recruitment costs overall.

Other savings achieved include reductions in conventional advertising costs, postage, printing and stationery, whilst

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