In October 2020, an application discovery research study took place to uncover how we might increase the quantity and quality of applications for teaching roles through the Teaching Vacancies service. The study highlighted the need for a standardised application form. Research with users informed two MVP application prototypes: an application form for jobseekers and an application tracking system for hiring staff. These prototypes were tested and iterated three times. Following this, the MVP was defined and development started.
# About this work
Questions still existed around the shortlisting process and what the next steps are in the hiring staff journey. Further research was required to understand how to better support schools and jobseekers after candidates have been shortlisted. The aim of this study was to build our understanding of what the end-to-end teacher recruitment journey looks like for hiring staff.
The study consisted of semi-structured interviews with maintained schools, single academy trusts and small multi-academy trusts, which were our target audience.
# Who we tested with
We spoke with 8 hiring staff (1 office manager, 2 HR managers, 1 deputy head and 3 headteachers) from:
- 4 local authority maintained schools
- 1 free school
- 1 small trust
- 1 single academy trust
# What did we do?
- 8 remote 50 minute sessions were completed using Zoom
- a discussion guide was followed to ensure the sessions were consistent
# What we learned
Hiring staff receive most applications online - either through a service or by email. Occasionally, however, they might receive hardcopy applications. The latter are most commonly scanned in order to be processed together with the remainder of the applications.
“They would send [them] to […] the school office email or they might be posted… so we might receive them in hardcopy…”
Once the job listing is live, hiring staff members want to be able to check how it is performing by looking at the application statistics: how many people have viewed the job listing and how many have applied. They also want to be able to make changes to the listing if it isn’t getting the expected results.
“If we put a post and we’ve got very few applications, we obviously sit down and ask why is that… each post is different and has to be attractive.”
When reviewing applications, hiring staff members note how the applications meet the desirable and essential criteria for the job. They also keep track of which ones they have already reviewed and which are pending review.
The research revealed that hiring staff could save valuable time when reviewing applications if the gaps in employment were checked automatically by the system and asked what the jobseeker did in that period, instead of leaving it to the jobseeker to disclose any gaps themselves. This forces hiring staff to compare all the dates in the jobseeker’s employment history, which “is a tedious process”.
“I would be more comfortable with applying through a DfE service because it feels more official. You expect that all the safeguarding things are in check, etc.”
On the application teachers expect to include their education and qualifications and other professional qualifications.
“With teaching, the gap in your service needs to be recorded. If I’ve had a year travelling, I need to record that. I need to say what I did.”
As found in previous application research studies, some hiring staff anonymise applications before sharing them with the shortlisting panel. They either remove the information by deleting personal details on a copy of the application or by printing the application and detaching the parts that can identify an applicant. Some schools/ trusts do not follow this practice for a range of different reasons. They don’t believe this step is necessary, it hinders the process (as it prevents them from knowing whether the candidate has previously applied for a role at the school), they lack the tools to anonymise, or they need to review their recruitment practices.
“Through Teach-in-herts you are able to download an anonymised copy of the application, so going forward we are considering our recruitment process. That’s an option and if you look at their site, it does say it’s good practice.”
Hiring staff would like to schedule interviews with shortlisted candidates through the service. Some prepare the interview/ tasks timetable before the job is listed, allowing them to indicate the interview dates in the job advert. However, sometimes it is difficult for hiring staff to estimate how many candidates they will shortlist for the role, so setting up a timetable beforehand is not always possible.
One of the biggest challenges experienced throughout the process of recruiting teachers is collecting references. Hiring staff would like to collect references before the interviews take place, but quite frequently referees have to be chased, hindering the recruitment timeline. References are most commonly collected via email but some hiring personnel prefer to phone referees directly.
“People are less likely to be dishonest when they speak in person.”
Hiring staff believe that some processes could be done automatically and in bulk (e.g. by ticking boxes to perform actions on selected applicants), such as sending forms directly (e.g. disclosure forms, referee forms), and notifying rejected candidates.
Once a candidate has been appointed (after the shortlisting process), they receive a conditional offer (subject to checks). Hiring staff focus on performing those checks, which includes making sure the candidate is registered in the database of qualified teachers, carrying out DBS checks, and other activities depending on the school.
Given that Teaching Vacancies is a government site, some hiring staff believe that the service could and should perform checks automatically - such as checking the database of qualified teachers and even performing DBS checks on behalf of hiring staff.
“ If …those pre- recruitment checks could be done by the service […] that could save us loads [of time.”
Conducting DBS checks used to be a big challenge for hiring staff, but it has improved with time. However, since growing numbers of jobseekers are subscribing to the DBS update service, some schools/ trusts ask on their applications if the jobseeker has done so and requests the DBS number to complete that step right away. All applicants must complete this step even if they have been working abroad, but this step cannot be completed until the applicant has a local address. If the candidate has been working/ living abroad they must provide the school/ trust with a clearance certificate from the country in which they have been working. Most candidates are aware of this, and come prepared.
“99% of the time they already come with this.”
Finally, when recruiting teachers, hiring staff follow a set of recruitment steps or processes. The process might be set out by their local authority, a hiring officer at the trust level, or the person in charge of recruitment at the school. These are based on the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidelines and might be refined over time with information gained from different sources such as seminars or courses on safe recruitment.
The process flow of the ‘as is’ end-to-end journey can be found in the Miro board (jpeg).
# Next steps
- a prototype will be created to allow hiring staff to anonymise applications and to shortlist in bulk (prioritised features)
- a user research study (End-to-end application - round 2) will be carried out with hiring staff to test the usability of the new features