Hiring Practices and Successful Employment

How To

Promising Practices

Marketing that uses storytelling and communicates values and impact of the school district/school

Describe the district, school, and job in terms of the value add each provides, rather than focusing on job requirements in order to inspire candidates to want to apply. This includes describing the impact that the individual would make in the lives of the students with whom he or she works.

 

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Highlight the experience of current employees in marketing materials
  • Clearly articulate the mission and vision of the district/school
  • Use social media platforms to reach as wide an audience as possible
 People of color who chose to be teachers cite moral or value-based reasons for wanting to teach and often see it as an opportunity to give back and act as a change agent. Therefore, shaping marketing materials to appeal to these values could attract more minority teachers
Spotlights
Spotlight: TeachInOregon Website (OR)
Description As part of its plan to achieve educational equity, Oregon revamped its Department of Education website to communicate the impact teachers can have. The home page now includes a Youtube video of Oregon teachers talking about why they teach in Oregon along with inspirational moments with students
Scope of Reach The home page is a recruitment tool and contains links to help potential candidates navigate the EPP, licensure, and employment stages of the pipeline and is available in both English and Spanish
Timeframe 2013-present
Budget / Sources of funds Budget unknown; funded by the Oregon Legislature
Actor(s) Implementing Collaboration between Oregon Department of Education, the Chief Education Office, and Mambo Media
Results The website is still in its infancy but aims to:
  • Promote the teaching profession by highlighting the work of current employees
  • Be explicit about the need for a more diverse workforce
  • Provide information about multiple pathways to becoming a teacher
Employee referral programs

Schools and school districts are turning every employee into a recruiter by encouraging them to pass on the contact information of potential hires. Because current employees know the culture and expectations of the job, they are uniquely able to recommend people who might be a good fit. Funding for these programs can come from the recruitment budget and replace travel-related costs of job fairs.

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • HR staff should make it as easy as possible for employees to make the referral
  • Where possible, school rewards the employee with a referral bonus if the referred person becomes an employee. Initially, this can be a nominal amount, e.g. $100 gift card.
  • School sets a target for referred employees, share with current employees, and update on progress towards the goal
  • HR staff should reach out to referred candidates quickly
  • Employees need to be sufficiently diverse and willing to portray their job in a positive context
 Staff of color are very likely to have qualified candidates of color in their social networks that the HR Department might not otherwise recruit
Spotlights
Spotlight: KIPP NYC’s and Uncommon Schools’ employee referral programs (NY, CT)
Description Many CMOs offer referral bonuses to employees who refer a candidate who is ultimately hired. Current employees receive the bonus for anyone they refer who is ultimately hired. All that is required of employees is to provide the contact information and background of the person being referred, and the recruitment team does the rest, which includes contacting every referral
Scope of Reach KIPP Schools and Uncommon Schools
Timeframe Ongoing
Budget / Sources of funds KIPP NYC currently offers $1000 per successful hire, but it did not do this in the first year of the program. Instead, they started with smaller rewards of $100 gift card per successful hire plus a $100 gift card to the employee who referred the most people. Uncommon Schools offers $1,000 for referrals for immediate hire and $500 for all other referrals. These CMOs have found that the cost of the referral bonus is less than the cost of travelling to and participating in job fairs
Actor(s) Implementing KIPP NYC Recruitment Team and Uncommon Schools
Results
  • KIPP NYC: The program has enabled KIPP NYC to quickly fill openings with qualified candidates. In 2016, there were 280 referrals for 63 teaching positions. Ultimately, 33 referred candidates were hired to fill 52% of the open teaching positions
  • Uncommon in CT: Employee referrals account for a larger percentage of new hires than any other recruitment strategy
Spotlight: Teamable
Description Teamable is an employee referral and diversity hiring app that allows employees to easily click on people from their social networks whom they would recommend for a job with their employer. HR departments are immediately notified whom to pursue cultivation, and employees are rewarded for any referrals they have made.
Scope of Reach Teamable is an app open to employers in all industries.
Timeframe Allows users to instantly refer and track results
Budget / Sources of funds N/A
Actor(s) Implementing N/A
Results
  • Medallia is a Teamable client that has reported a 15% reduction in hiring cost
  • Stripe is a Teamable client that has reported a 12-fold increase in the number of referrals
Hire as early as possible
Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • A study done by the Indiana Department of Education found that 60% of teachers hired in March-May were highly effective compared to 40% of those hired later in the hiring season
  • Know and act on filling vacancies for the next school year as early as is feasible
 The most desired teaching candidates receive and accept job offers earlier in the hiring season. Because their demographic is limited in number, applicants of color are often among the most desired candidates. Therefore, schools and districts can yield more candidates of color if they hire early in the process before potential hires choose other options, such as working in another state or in a private school
Teacher residency programs

Residency programs place candidates in the classroom after short, intensive summer training programs. Candidates continue to take classes and complete certification requirements part-time while teaching full-time.

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Teacher residency curriculum is intentionally designed to prepare teachers to teach in high need schools
  • Existence of a provisional license or permission to teach full-time without first obtaining a teaching certificate (this already exists in CT) and political climate amenable to alternate routes to certification
 Potential candidates of color are often financially unable to pursue full-time education preparation that does not allow them to simultaneously maintain a full-time job.
Spotlights
Spotlight: New York City Teaching Fellowship (NY)
Description Regarded as one of the most prestigious alternative route to certification programs, NYCTF Fellows receive a summer intensive training course (for which they receive a $2,500 living stipend) and are then placed in NYC public schools to teach in a high-need subject area while earning a master’s degree at one of the fellowship’s partner universities. Fellows who join the NYCTF Bronx Cohort are hired early and receive reduced tuition, networking and support, and opportunities for loan assistance programs like AmeriCorps
Scope of Reach Open to Bachelor’s degree candidates who are not certified to teach in any state and have not completed an EPP
Timeframe 2000 - present
Budget / Sources of funds NYCTF received $35 million from the New York State Department of Education, which has received two federal grants to subsidize the program at partner universities. The school district pays two-thirds the cost of licensure via Master’s degree ($8,000), and the candidate pays the other one-third ($4,000) through a payroll deduction
Actor(s) Implementing Collaboration between The New Teacher Project and the NYC Department of Education. Fellows earn Master’s degrees at partner universities throughout New York City
Results
  • The cohort of Fellows that began in Summer 2016 is 66% candidates of color
  • To date, 18,200 Fellows have been trained
  • 1 in 5 NYC math, science, and special education teachers are New York City Teaching Fellows
  • More than 9,000 Fellows teach high-needs subjects in New York City classrooms
  • 619 former Fellows are currently principals, assistant principals, or other instructional administrators
Cultivate candidates with supplementary supports through hiring process

Provide a variety of recruitment strategies and support programs that can be tailored to each candidate during hiring process (school context, housing for relocation, housing credit, and connection with local affinity groups)

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • HR capacity to identify and then meet the individual needs of each applicant
  • Knowledge of and relationships with local service providers and affinity groups
 Many of CT’s teachers of color come from out of the state, and this strategy is particularly useful for out-of-state candidates. Connecting candidates to resources and local affinity groups helps to demystify the CT context while building relationships with candidates
Create “hand-offs” from local EPPs to district hiring staff

Develop a relationship with EPPs geographically located in the district to provide formal and informal hand-offs, such as guaranteed interviews, internship placements that lead to full-time jobs for successful EPP students, and extra support through the application process

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • School district HR departments willing to invest time in creating structured agreements for job interviews and / or offers to candidates in existing Grow Your Own and Pathways to Teaching programs
  • Local EPPs successfully enroll and retain students of color
 Graduating students of color are in high demand nationally, and it is ideal to keep Connecticut-trained teachers in classrooms inside the state
Offer recruitment bonuses

Teacher salaries in high-poverty districts are on average lower than those in low-poverty districts, with differences as large as $16,000/year. To counteract this imbalance, offer one-time hiring bonus to teachers who choose to teach in hard-to-staff schools and who are certified to teach in shortage areas.

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Target hard-to-staff schools and shortage areas rather than all schools within the state
  • Incentivize candidates to choose high-poverty districts even where those districts are surrounded by higher paying, low-poverty districts
 Increased salary opportunities can make hard to staff schools even more attractive to teachers of color by helping to overcome the pay imbalanced between high poverty and low poverty school districts
Track how many new employees are hired from each recruitment medium

Tracking and disaggregating data by race and languages spoken can help HR Departments determine which recruitment strategies produce the greatest diversity benefit in order to plan for the next recruitment cycle. States with similar education contexts to Connecticut, like Oregon and Colorado, have included tracking this data in recent strategic plans to increase the number of teachers of color

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Keep accurate records on each applicant
  • Have access to data management and analysis skills required to track data and analyze use of and yield from different recruitment strategies
  • Use data collection from one year to inform recruitment practices for future years
 Knowing which strategies yield the most racially and linguistically diverse candidates helps HR Departments strategically use limited resources
Enhance staff capacity of HR to increase one-to-one relationship building with applicants

Staff HR Departments to have the capacity to assign a team member to each applicant to support that applicant through the application process as well as connect the applicant with any other resources offered to new hires

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Design HR job positions such that team members are assigned a cohort of applicants to shepherd through the hiring season
  • Develop an application process that facilitates learning enough about candidates to connect them with the right resources for their situation (housing support, connection to affinity groups)
 Relationship building is an asset in recruiting teaching candidates who are highly sought after by other states and districts
Diversify sources and processes for finding teacher candidates

HR practices in education tend to rely on traditional approaches, like job fairs, that create limited opportunity for potential teachers to develop a relationship with HR departments and schools. Instead, schools and districts should create multiple pathways through which candidates can get connected to the hiring process

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Empower multiple actors to think of themselves as “recruiters” for schools and districts
  • Track and analyze data on which touch points are most successful in order to best allocate resources in future years
  • Expand use of sources such as employee networks, social media platforms, university career services, local affinity groups, HBCUs, and international partnerships
 Increasing the number of touch points for initial contact increases the likelihood of tapping into the networks of minority teacher candidates
Spotlights
Spotlight: Bridgeport Public Schools PASSPORT program (CT)
Description Passport allowed Bridgeport Public Schools (BPS) to recruit teacher candidates from Puerto Rico. Recruits began teaching in BPS and were given a 2-year grace period in which to get certified, as opposed to the usual 3-month grace period
Scope of Reach Bridgeport Public Schools
Timeframe Unknown
Budget / Sources of funds N/A
Actor(s) Implementing Bridgeport Public Schools in partnership with CSDE
Results
  • At least one current BPS principal first joined the district as a teacher through the PASSPORT program
Spotlight: Using social media as a recruitment tool (IN)
Description The HR Director in Indianapolis saw a Facebook post from Butler University celebrating a graduating education major for winning a prestigious future teacher award. The HR Director commented on the Facebook post, “She needs to come interview with me at Washington Township.” The student, who had not yet started her job search because she had been told most schools weren’t hiring yet, followed up
Scope of Reach According to November 2015 Pew Research study, 35% of social media users use social media to look for jobs and 21% have applied for a job found on social media
Timeframe Current
Budget / Sources of funds N/A
Actor(s) Implementing Washington Township Schools Human Resources Department
Results
  • The graduating senior is now a first-year teacher in Washington township for the 2016 - 2017 school year
Address bias in hiring

Research shows that White candidates are preferred and seen as more qualified than candidates of color with the same qualifications. There is also a misperception that prioritizing diversity means deprioritizing quality. Where the current teacher staff lacks diversity, hiring processes that make “social fit” with current employees a significant factor reduce the likelihood that new candidates will make the teaching staff more diverse.

Critical Success Factors: Diversity Benefit:
  • Cultural competence as a factor in the hiring process
  • Implicit bias and diversity trainings for existing staff, especially those who serve on hiring committees
  • Have hiring committees write explanations for why they are or are not recommending each candidate for hire to uncover implicit bias
 Increases the likelihood that candidates of color are not being passed over for vacant positions for unintended or subconscious reasons
Spotlights
Spotlight: Unconscious Bias Training by Paradigm
Description Paradigm provides workshops based on behavioral science research to train participants to identify and manage unconscious bias in areas including recruitment and hiring. Its unconscious bias training emphasizes the “similar to me” bias which leads people to like people who are similar to themselves, even in ways that are not related to the job. The workshop also identifies how a structured interview process can reduce the impact of these biases
Scope of Reach Paradigm’s services are available to all employers as a consulting and advising service
Timeframe Ongoing
Budget / Sources of funds Unknown
Actor(s) Implementing Paradigm uses a partnership model to work with clients to execute new initiatives to attract, recruit, develop, and retain an inclusive workforce. Their clients include Pinterest, Airbnb, and Twitter
Results
  • Greenhouse participated in an unconscious bias training with Paradigm that enabled the company to revise its interviewing process to manage the impact of bias