We all know that teacher recruitment can be a very costly process, and with teacher shortages in some areas, it is a struggle to even find good candidates who live close or are willing to relocate. Most schools advertise their vacancies in the TES (other quality publications are available) and through their local authority jobs board. The TES has a good layout and job search but it is costly. Also TES jobs are advertised to everyone worldwide who is looking. So although you may get a lot of “clicks” onto your advert which sounds like good value for money, many of those prospective applicants will discount your school based on location without going any further.

Local authority job boards for teacher recruitment are often very functional and not very inspiring design-wise. Therefore, those who actively want to find a new role are more likely to look but those who are just browsing through are less likely to turn to a rather drab-looking list of jobs as plain text.

 

What are the alternatives then?

Well, hosting a job vacancies page on your school website is a really cost effective way of setting up attractive-looking adverts, as well as providing key downloads such as application forms, job specifications, person specifications and so on. You can then widen the target audience for the advert by using hashtags on Twitter such as #teachingvacancyuk which was set up by a UK teacher who wanted to ensure schools could advertise for staff for free. Additionally, you can also set up a job advert for very little money via Facebook, linking directly to your school website. You can target people living within a set radius of your school if you wish; this is especially useful for support roles where people are likely to apply for roles closer to where they live. Our Facebook advertising guide for schools can help give you an idea of the way to set up an advert for your job role – and it only costs a few pounds instead of a few hundred!

Luckily we have also made things easy for you when creating job vacancies on your website too! Check out these ideas, all of which our easy-to-use CMS makes possible in just a few short clicks.

 

Harness the power of Google

Our websites are automatically optimised for SEO; just adding a page called “Vacancies” will enable Google and other search engines to quickly display your vacancies when potential staff google your school. Even if the page simply has a short description of typical vacancies and text to the effect of “there are no current vacancies” displayed it will be indexed and ready for when you do post vacancies.

Add a ‘Vacancy’ News Category

Adding a vacancy news category allows your vacancies page to automatically list vacancies as you add them – providing the perfect feed of vacancies for anyone who is perusing local listings for their next perfect role!

Add an expiring date to adverts for easy deletion

If you add a “Stop publishing” date to the vacancy it will automatically be hidden once the set expiry date has passed. This saves you looking for posts to delete, and saves any candidates the heartache of realising too late that the role has been filled!

Use our drop-in formatting

Our drop-in formatting for vacancies helps you lay out the page in an attractive way so that it is a much nicer read for visitors than some dull teacher recruitment bulletin boards you may have seen. This also allows you to standardise your formatting for every vacancy so frequent browsers know what to expect when they come for a nosy!

Use document autolists for attachments

Our document autolists mean you can add all attachments relevant to vacancies at once rather than creating links one by one. Upload your job descriptions, applications form, person specification, relevant safeguarding information, and anything else you want to add in to make sure you can attract the right candidates.

Save and reuse any standard attachments

If you have any standard attachments which are the same for multiple vacancies (i.e. standard teacher job description, or proforma application) you can save all of these and manage them all from one place. Then for each advert, you can add them with one click, including updating the standard forms for any current adverts you have running if necessary.

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With budgets being squeezed ever tighter, we are sure your school could benefit from saving a few pennies wherever you can. So we hope these tips help inspire you to think of your school website as your potential jobs board for teacher recruitment. Another benefit is that you are less likely to find lots of agencies contacting you as they mostly go through the more common job boards!

If you need any help finding out how to do any of the steps listed above do get in touch with our support team who will be happy to help. Alternatively, you can find our Greenhouse CMS Tutorial videos here.