Whether your district hires two or 2,000 teachers each year, it's a challenging process. First, you need to make sure you're tapping into the best pool of candidates. Then you have to find highly qualified people who do what you're looking for and are a good fit for your district. And you have to do all of this quickly, since, according to a 2003 study from The New Teacher Project, 31 percent to 60 percent of applicants for four urban districts withdrew from the hiring process because they were fed up with waiting for offers. With the average cost to hire, recruit and lose a teacher totaling $50,000, and with teacher turnover rates at 16 percent (compared with 12 percent for other professions), it's become increasingly important to perfect your hiring process if you haven't already.
Luckily, there are plenty of options available to help you do just that. A number of companies have created online systems that streamline the entire process. These offerings help districts save time and become more efficient by cutting down on (in some cases eliminating) paper, tracking candidates and improving customer service.
"It currently takes far too long months, sometimes for a teacher to apply and receive a confirmation of hiring," says Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. "Using online applications and a more streamlined hiring process is an important first step toward moving away from a very antiquated process that's now in place."
Say Goodbye to Paper
Lisa Kudelka is the human resources manager for Bismarck (N.D.) Public Schools. It's the second-largest district in the state, with 10,000 students and 820 teachers. Each spring, Kudelka's staff receives between 800 and 1,000 applications. The paperwork is overwhelming. "We couldn't even get back to people to tell them that a job was filled," she says. Kudelka knew she had to provide better customer service.
Before automation, staff would copy all the materials and put them in different files for principals, who'd be forced to come to the central office and spend hours sorting through applications. "It was highly inconvenient, applications got lost and it was a real nightmare," says Kudelka.
Since half of her applications come from new graduates who are comfortable with technology, Kudelka was determined to create a paperless system. At first, she posted her application form on the school's Web site, where users could type in their answers, but still had to print and mail the application. She spent five years seeking a truly paperless solution, and finally found it at last year's American Association of School Personnel Administrators conference.
Now, Kudelka's team uses edZapp. She chose it for several reasons. First, because it is hosted on edZapp's server, she didn't need have to hire IT people or purchase any hardware or software. Second, the price was right: For less than $10,000, she got a highly customized product. "Everything is done via e-mail now," says Kudelka, "so we're saving on copying, postage and staffing costs. I think we'll come out even."
Candidates complete their applications on the Web. If they are unable to upload a transcript, they send it to edZapp, where it's scanned and uploaded to their file. (If they mistakenly send it to Kudelka, she faxes it to edZapp.) Once an application is online, Kudelka can flag, say, 10 people for a social studies position and ask her principal to check them out. All the principal has to do is log on from his desk to narrow it down, and then his hiring people can check out the remaining candidates.
"Some of the products we looked at required a scanner," says Kudelka. "Other had upfront IT costs. This was the only option that took the entire IT and financial burden off our plate."
Do It Yourself (with Tech Experts)
For Mark Frost, assistant superintendent for human resource services at the Park Hill School District in Kansas City, Mo., the solution was to build it himself. His staff receives 2,000 applications a year and hires about 100 teachers and 400 classified staff members. "We were doing things fairly typically," says Frost. "We'd receive paper applications, which I'd take home, screen, and make notes on. Then we'd make a file folder for each application and put it in a cabinet." As with Kudelko's district, Frost's staff would make photocopies or scan the applications and e-mail them to administrators. "There was lots of secretarial time at the copier and lots of paper management."
