by Test Prep & Tutoring Professionals.
K-12 Program Recruiting.
Have you heard the expression “dig the well before you are thirsty?”
Well, grab your shovels and start digging. Although grant writing and rfp preparation is well underway for next season’s Public School remediation programs, a key element to the eventual success of those programs, staff recruiting, may or may not be as robust. If you are excellent at drafting a winning proposal but less so in terms of recruiting the staff to ably manage those programs, consider the following tactics:
1. Look to recruit a school district’s faculty and staff. Put together a simple yet impactful training program headed by one or more of your key veterans. Be sure to include classroom management in addition to the content your company plans to deliver. This approach serves dual purposes: it allows your organization to direct some of the funding it receives to the school district while also conceivably reducing some of the administrative expenses associated with recruiting.
2. Seek graduate level Education majors from local colleges or universities. Although their time may be limited, this is an excellent way to network with important gate-keepers and departmental advisors. The win-win is that folks will get some solid experience in their field of study and the department can funnel some $ to their grad students (not everyone gets TA or GA positions in grad school). If the program requires that teachers be certified, you may need to discuss your intent here in order to receive a waiver which highlights the merits of your candidates.
3. Seek out recently retired educators through various websites. This can be hit or miss. The key is to elicit enough responses to pick only the best candidates; good classroom managers and folks that can take some direction about intended outcomes.
4. Network through any current educational contact you have with an eye towards identifying substitute teachers at various districts. Guidance counselors can be very helpful in this regard. Again, there is a potential win-win here since substitutes are often looking to accumulate contact hours and earn money, while the districts in which they teach may be hoping to increase their loyalty through a helpful gesture.
Ultimately, these tactics require a certain level of diligence to work effectively. Given that public school summer programs are soon to be underway and the end of the school year is not too far off, there is a pretty fair window of opportunity to start (or continue) your K12 program recruitment without being overly distracting to guidance counselors, educators, or school administrators. Upcoming Events
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Digging the well before you are thirsty should also apply to your tutoring or program management software! Many times I have heard potential customers say that they are desperate for a management system but due to not being very busy, will wait a few months until the students lists come in for federally funded tutoring.
As with finding good staff to run your tutoring or club sessions this can be disastrous. Installing and learning a new system, attending training and ensuring that your staff all know and understand what is expected of them while using a new system takes time. You do not want to be doing that when student lists come through.
Take the time to assess potential systems in advance; use downtime to run a few past students through the system replicating exactly what occurred to ensure you can navigate any system and its nuances prior to live new students being entered.
Taking on a new system early will also allow you to manage your recruitment and store records for your tutors and staff long before you need to assign them to students or schedule sessions or time tables. It just makes good business sense to plan ahead. Don’t buy at the last minute and then have to fight your staff who are busy running everything on spreadsheets!
Oases Online manages all staff records and staff can be divided into a human resource area if they do not work for you yet. Upload resumes, background checks and monitor all required documentation as the staff provide it to you. Determine if an item is a deal breaker to working with children and oases won’t let you put that staff member with a student until all items have been received saving you time and money and potential problems.
