Spotlight on Education Sector Hiring

Are Schools, Colleges, Trust Academies, Universities and other Education settings geared up for effective hiring?

The Education sector faces several talent-sourcing challenges, not least balancing a scarcity of candidates and disruption in the sector. In-house recruitment teams must also contend with evolving skill requirements, maintaining strict GDPR compliance and background check requirements, all while striving to attract and retain top talent in a competitive market.

To address these challenges effectively, organisations require tools that streamline their hiring processes and provide actionable insights. In this blog, we look at how Schools, Colleges, Trust Academies and Universities can manage their recruitment workflows to enhance candidate experience, and build stronger, more agile teams.

Teacher vacancies increased by 20% to 2,800 in November 2023 from 2,300 in November 2022, and more than doubled in the last three years from 1,100 in November 2020, according to newly released government figures.

Talent Acquisition Seasonality in the Education Sector

With national teacher shortages and a tight labour market, the education sector candidate market moves quickly. In fact, 75% of recruitment can happen in the ‘teacher resignation window’. Teacher resignations tend to happen at the end of February, May and October, to fall in line with deadlines teachers can submit their notice if they wish to commence a new role at the start of the term. This means that recruitment activities frequently occur between March and May, resulting in a peak of recruitment activity and pressure to be responsive.

A seamless, higher-quality recruitment process is imperative to make the difference between hiring the best teachers and leaving a position unfilled. Key factors Education sector in-house recruitment teams should consider in order to attract suitable talent, while providing a great candidate experience include:

• A systematic way of working with automation that streamlines the hiring workflow, supports collaboration and gives control and visibility of the whole process to decision-makers and others who need it.
• Connecting with talent at the right time and keeping candidates informed of the hiring process to reduce drop-off rates.
• Compliance and security over candidate data.
• A fully mobile process, essential for ease of application on any device.
• User-friendly talent acquisition technology to work with those involved in the recruitment process – but not necessarily recruitment specialists.

Attracting High-Quality Talent in a Competitive Market

A great example of an educational organisation improving its recruitment processes through an Applicant Tracking System is Thinking Schools Academy Trust. Thinking Schools Academy Trust, (TSAT) is a close network of nursery, primary, secondary, and alternative provision schools located throughout the South-East and South-West of England. The schools are united in a common goal of transforming the life chances of young people across the South and East of England.

Similarly to other Educational Organisations, TSAT faced some sector-specific recruitment challenges and to address them, the team sought an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that provides flexibility in making changes, configured specifically to the education sector’s needs.

By choosing Eploy’s Applicant Tracking System, Thinking Schools Academy Trust were able to:

• Attract more candidates through Targeted Talent Outreach, Job Board integrations, Advanced Candidate Search, Strategic Sourcing Tools, and Robust Candidate Engagement.
• Accelerate Recruitment by utilising Configurable Recruitment Workflows relevant to roles, Direct Posting to Job Boards, Dedicated Hiring Managers Portal (for schools that look after their own recruitment), Candidate Screening and Assessments, Onboarding Management.
• Ensure Compliance via a Compliance Management System, helping ensure Legal Standards Adherence, Ethical Hiring Processes, Secure Data Handling, and Regulatory Reporting.

On-demand recording: Learn more about how Thinking Schools Academy Trust transformed its hiring strategy by implementing Eploy from Simon Arnold’s, Recruitment Manager at TSAT, talk at IHR Live London 2024.

Automating Background Checks

Background checks are a crucial part of recruitment in the Education sector. Candidates must verify that they have the Right to Work in the UK and pass criminal background checks to ensure they are suitable for the role. It’s equally important to comply with GDPR regulations when dealing with each candidate’s personal information. However, manual background checks can often be slow, tedious, and prone to human error, especially if the recruitment team is dealing with a high volume of applications. This can often slow down the time to hire and worsen candidate experience, due to applicants having to wait a long time for the checks to be processed.

With manual background checking that is not integrated with your ATS, it’s not uncommon for multiple forms to be issued for completion before being onboarded in an education establishment. This manual approach tends to require a spreadsheet to coordinate the data, opening up the opportunity for errors, a time lag in updating the information and reliance on individuals receiving the data to accurately populate the spreadsheet. Overall, it is time-consuming and open to errors and delays.

The impact of a delay in the Time to Hire of teachers creates a ripple effect on students' learning and the need for teachers to cover classes.

Naomi Bouverie, Talent Acquisition Lead from London South East Colleges shared her experience on this point: ‘’Prior to implementing Eploy and using Experian's background checks, our time-to-hire was around six weeks before a candidate was fully onboarded. Now, it has been halved to 20 days.’’

By automating background checks, in-house recruitment teams can significantly reduce costs and administrative burdens. Instead of manually collecting and processing candidate data, which is often a time-consuming and error-prone task, technology ensures a streamlined, more accurate approach. You can learn more about Eploy’s integration with Experian and how the London South East Colleges streamlined their DBS and Right-to-Work checks in our webinar ''Personalisation in a Digital World''.

Want to find out more?

Balancing the Education sector recruitment priorities can be achieved with the right tools to take control of your hiring processes. Want to learn more? You are only 30 minutes away from understanding how you can make your life easier with an ATS. No hard sell, no strings attached, just some winning ideas to help you with your education recruitment strategy.