Still Not Fully Staffed? 3 Simple Reasons Why

As we continue our research with principals into their experiences with the growing teacher shortage, I am somewhat surprised at the numbers that are still interviewing to fill open positions.   

 Having worked with and observed numerous schools/districts over the last 10 years the reasons why are both simple and obvious. Well obvious to a professional recruiter.

 1. You Don’t Know What Your Problem Is

It starts by identifying if you have a recruiting problem or is it a retention issue. Doing this isn’t rocket science but it does require you look at information that in the past schools saw little to no value in. I asked the director of a state HR organization if they tracked which new teachers from what colleges and universities in his state had the greatest retention rates. “We always thought that might be a good idea but we’ve never gotten around to doing so”, was his reply. With fewer educators entering the market finding them is merely step one. Keeping them is the goal.

2. You Don’t Know What the Solution Is

There is not a one size fits all solution regardless of what your problem is. The one thing that is universal are the two reasons that people look to make a move. They move to learn a new skill and/or to gain a new level of responsibility. Money is often the excuse, not the reason until we get into the five figure territory. Even the issue of money can be solved with a dynamic value proposition. 

3. You Don’t Want To Do It A Different Way

Recently we have been conducting some research with building principals. We spoke with principals since when a position goes unfilled with the exception of very small school districts; it’s not the superintendent or HR that must deal with it, but the principal, the building staff and ultimately the students. What we found is for 95% of those we spoke with there has been a significant drop in both the quantity and the quality of applicants applying for their open positions in the last 3 years. We heard of positions going unfilled for over a year with zero people applying for them. Two weeks before the start of school, there were principals still trying to hire a kindergarten teacher. Literally no one knew of the states for which there are reciprocity agreements in place. Those who were getting out of state candidates could not get them hired as it was up to the candidate to bear the cost of relocating. All pointed to money and benefits being their primary recruiting tool. Not one had developed a value proposition.  A full 90% were posting generic job postings believing it was about getting more people to apply. Of those posting 90% was focused on what they wanted from a candidate leaving just 10% to what they had to offer.  The time frame from post to hire varied from 2 weeks to 2 months. They spoke of teachers accepting counter offers from their current employer to just not showing up on the first day. While job fairs have long been a staple of school hiring at a job fair this spring there were in excess of 200 districts looking to hire and less than 125 candidates who showed up.

 As a side note there are always things that come as a surprise to us when we do research. For this the surprise was the number of principals who were new to the position or those schools who still lacked a building leader. At this point of our research it’s running at 18% in this one state. 

 There is a marked difference between what HR does and what E Squared does. HR is all about process. Recruiting is all about results. HR is about getting someone hired on. Recruiting is all about finding the right person for that position and increasing retention. HR is about getting you in and started. Recruiting gives a candidate not just a reason to start but more important a reason to stay.  Process many times gets in the way of results.