The prospect of needing to hire teachers in the middle of the school year provokes monstrous headaches for most Division Heads. No matter how solid your faculty community is in September, circumstances can change at any moment. Medical leave, unexpected departures, and necessary firings all affect your school’s ability to keep your students taught by the best instructors available—and the pool of teachers available to jump into your school in the middle of the year is significantly smaller than that for September starters.
Still, there are some unconventional and creative ways to accommodate your immediate need for qualified applicants without skipping steps to properly vet your incoming teachers. Here are four ways in which you can lessen your midyear hiring headache.
- Expand your search beyond local candidates. While the local job boards might help you find someone who’s already within commuting distance, you never know who’d be willing to relocate and teach at your school. You might even catch someone who’s in the process of moving to your area!
- Along the same lines, consider advertising open positions to more diverse organizations than the typical job board. There are job boards that specialize in catering to veterans, for example, as well as midyear graduates from local universities who would appreciate the unexpected opening for a position teaching in their trained subject area.
- Explore flexible interview strategies. In addition to the traditional phone interview, experiment by using Skype, Google Hangouts, or even Facetime to facilitate faster and convenient interviews before bringing them on campus.
- Have the contract only cover through the end of the school year, with the option to renew for the next full school year. This way, if the teacher ends up being unsuitable, you can simply not renew the contract.
Do you have any midyear hiring techniques that we missed? Share them with your fellow Division Heads in the comment section below!
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for School Heads Vol. 13 No. 1 Comprehensive Interviewing: Phone Interviews
The Source for School Heads Vol. 13 No. 4 Comprehensive Interviewing: In-Person Interviews
The Source for Business Managers Vol. 14 No. 3 Red Flags on Resumes
The Source for School Heads Vol. 13 No. 6 The Absolute Worst Interview Questions—And What to Ask Instead
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 28 No. 16 Hiring and Orienting Your New Advisors
I&P Vol. 40 No. 8 Preparing Your School's Families for New Teachers
I&P Vol. 40 No. 13 The Business Manager as a Change Agent
