Attract Qualified Candidates

Market Your District

Expand Outreach to Reach Potential Candidates

Enlist Community Help in Your Recruitment Efforts

Define Your
Ideal Candidate

Craft a Recruitment Message

Strengthen Relationships with Institutions of Higher Education

"Grow Your Own"

Non-Traditional Candidates

Offer Incentives to Attract & Retain Educators

Market Your District

Often school districts invest time and resources to develop a positive image in their community, among parents and with students. They may have spent less time thinking about the image of their school district among potential job candidates or referrers of job candidates, such as personnel at educator preparation programs. An investment in marketing your school district as a good place to work can pay off in less effort required to recruit for individual positions and in more high quality candidates.

Promising strategies for marketing your district as a good place to work and teach:

• Assess your current marketing materials;

  Gather together brochures, your web site, newsletters, fact sheets, letters sent to educator preparation programs, job fair materials, and any other materials created to market or educate the public about your district. Read through the materials from the point of view of a potential job applicant.

• Do you have basic marketing materials for your district?
• What will readers learn about your school district from the materials?
• Are the strengths of the district clearly identified?
• Will readers learn why it is a good place to work and teach?
• Is there information that specifically targets potential job applicants?
• Do materials indicate how readers can find out about teaching and working in the district and about specific job opportunities?
  
  
• Make an inventory of your school district's strengths as a place to work and teach;
  
  
• Make the most of your website for recruiting educators;
  
  
• Explore how school districts use their website for recruitment;
  
• Develop marketing materials that specifically target potential job applicants.

Inventory of Strengths of Your School District as a Place to Work and Teach

Eleven Ways to Improve your Website for Recruiting Educators

Western Oregon University offers a template for a district marketing brochure

Here are some examples of how school districts use their web site to recruit educators:

Poudre, CO School District  http://www.psd.k12.co.us/jobs/

Los Angeles, CA Unified School District
http://www.teachinla.com/whyteach/about.html

Wichita, KS Public Schools Human Resource Pages http://www.usd259.com/jobs/ (scroll down)

New York City, NY Recruitment Web site  http://www.nycenet.edu/TEACHNYC/default.htm (Check out the pictures and comments from teachers)

Richland County, SC School District One

St. John's County, FL School District
http://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us/jobs/video.html (Includes video recruitment presentations)

Recruit Illinois, Create a Niche

Easy Ways to Market Your Schools, Education World, 2004.

The ABC List: A Public Relations Tool That's as Simple as A-B-C, Education World, 2005

Next: Define the Ideal Candidate>>>