Recruiting instructors...
What is your most common way of recruiting applicants for instructor positions at your school and how can the method be improved?
DIRECT INTERVIEW. WE WOULD NEED TO HAVE MORE QUALIFIED QUESTIONS
We also use behavior based interviews and have found this process to be very effective in helping us identify a person past behaviors, which are indicative of future performance.
From my knowledge we use internet job boards in recruiting faculty. I believe our method can be improved by being more descriptive in what our positions entail.
We generally use the internet (Career Builder/Monster). We have just about given up on newspaper ads because of their cost and the few results we get from them. One thing we have tried that gave us some results was to send mailings out to people who were licensed in the field we were looking for in town. However, it seemed that many of the people used their business address for their licenses and we didn't get as many responses as we had hoped we would.
Right, but I think that the ones that are just fishing often still have jobs and those are the people who I would rather hire than the ones who are currently unemployed. To me the "serious job hunters" often come with baggage that made them unemployed.
We use our network
1. graduates
2. employees
3. industy trade groups
We contact our graduates employers and ask them for recomendations on employees who are leaving the industry and might make good instructors. we them contact them and ask them to apply. We also post job openings on the industry web-pages.
Our most common way of recruiting applicants is through employee recommendations. This has shown to be very effective because they are in the same field and come with the preferred education and training.
We typically use employee referrals and internet job searches. We have been most successful with both. We have had a tremendous amount of success with employee referrals. These referrals usually stay with the company longer as they know their behavior is associated with someone else's name.
The most common way we recruit is through word of mouth from other instructors or staff members. Since we are well known in the industry, we frequently receive unsolicited resumes and phone inquiries, as well. We find these methods to be generally effective in helping us to locate qualified instructors.
The methods of advertisement are two-fold as I have seen. Our organization relies heavily on internet (Monster and Career Builder) to advertise positions. I have also sought after applicants from resources from within. Many of the staff are members of groups or associations from within the education field. Many are available and I have found them to be just as qualified as those coming from the internet.
Referrals from other instructors and staff members; unsolicited faxes from the job applicant; job inquiries from students taking our classes. Last resort: advertising in professional journals and/or local newspaper with internet connection.
Many of our instructors come from our parent company. Additionally, a good number of instructors come from employee recommendations. More recently, we have discussed advertising positions online.
One downside of employee recommendations is loyalty to friends. If the company/employee relationship goes bad it can often affect the views of friends who are also employed.
We use careerbuilders .com
Agreed. A good combination of word-of-mouth (particularly with at least a few excellent instructors) and light on-line work can provide a superior group of instructors. Never ignore your own students down the line though.
i tend to use a lot of word of mouth via my own instructors, from time to time i have used on-line.
We are still receiving more response from the newspaper, although there is a marked increase in the number of internet responses. My "personal" feelings are that those who respond via the internet are more likely to be "fishing" for a job, while those from the newspaper ads are the more serious job hunter. Also, we get more unsolicited queries from the internet.
Hi Ronald
Have you found the right ad newspaper to work well or are you getting more responses from the internet portion?
The most often used method is the help wanted section of area newspapers. Not only do the ads appear in print, but they have now expanded onto the internet. Based upon the success (or lack thereof), revisions are made to the content. We are going to attempt to be more descriptive, so that the respondents will be better qualified and the interview process will be less time consuming and less costly.
