The 4 “Cs” Every K-12 Recruiter Needs To Keep Candidates Engaged

Let’s face it: Retention in K-12 education is tough right now. HR teams have their work cut out as they navigate the lingering double-shortage of teaching staff while also keeping their existing employees engaged and committed. 

But retention begins well before a teacher or other staff member signs the hiring paperwork. The recruitment process itself can often set the tone for a new employee’s experience working with a district. And the stakes surrounding retention can be quite high — and expensive.

The Learning Policy Institute found that in 2017, “Urban districts can, on average, spend more than $20,000 on each new hire, including school and district expenses related to separation, recruitment, hiring, and training.” But when staff members depart from an organization within their first two years, it leaves a lasting impact — not just fiscally but academically, too. 

It’s in every district’s best interest to focus on engaging potential new hires from the moment they first encounter an organization. Here, a recruitment strategy that sets the foundation for successful employee retention is key. 

But in a buyer’s market, how do HR and recruiting teams keep their candidates engaged while also gathering the right information about them during the hiring process?

Districts with successful, retention-focused recruitment lean on these four “Cs”:

• They communicate consistently and clearly with applicants. 
• They connect meaningfully with candidates throughout the experience.
• They create excitement among potential new hires about their organization.
• They clarify systems around hiring to keep processes tight and effective.

These strategies are critical whether a district is working to build more comprehensive substitute teacher coverage or backfilling for non-instructional positions. Let’s take a closer look.

Communicate: Keep everyone in the loop

The first C focuses on candidate communication. One of the most common reasons candidates may disengage with an employer is due to a lack of communication. It is an unfortunate reality that, today, employers (and employees) face ghosting during the hiring process — meaning, one party receives no responses from the other even after multiple attempts to connect. 

In fact, according to a 2022 survey by Indeed, nearly 78% of respondents shared that they had ghosted a potential employer. Further, 40% of these same respondents also experienced ghosting themselves with employers, even after a second- or third-round interview follow-up! Whether it’s complete radio silence or a severely delayed response, poor communication runs the risk of damaging a candidate or employer’s reputation over time. 

Candidates also value feedback during the hiring process. And employers should too. According to a 2018 study by The Talent Board, 52% of candidates are more likely to nurture a relationship with an organization, whether it’s by referring friends, buying from that company, or other promotional behaviors — if they received feedback on the same day they interviewed with that organization. 

Feedback doesn’t just benefit candidates. School districts can learn so much from those applicants navigating the hiring process, including ways to make the whole experience more positive and efficient. 

Here are a few strategies to create effective communication between HR teams and candidates:

• Explore different ways of communicating with candidates. While email is typically the go-to channel for recruiters, HR teams may find that text messaging and other methods have higher opening and response rates.

• Build feedback opportunities in the hiring process. This includes both providing candidates with structured feedback after, say, a final round interview, as well as allowing candidates to share about their experiences with the recruiting team. Surveys are a quick and efficient way to collect this information from candidates, but it’s best to make time to share feedback via phone or live when giving it to candidates.
• Centralize communication in one place. Solutions like Red Rover Hiring help HR teams keep all candidate outreach and responses in one place, making it easy for recruiters to ensure no inbound request goes unanswered.

Connect: Develop a relationship with each candidate

High-quality teaching candidates for both full-time and substitute opportunities are always in high demand. That means it isn’t enough for school and district recruiting teams to focus only on outreach and building their pipeline. This brings us to our next C, connection. 

Building a genuine relationship with each candidate is essential. In their 2024 Candidate Experience Report, CareerPlug found that “22% of job applicants declined a job offer after a negative experience with people during the interview process.”

As the team at Monster.com eloquently puts it, “Recruiting is a relationship business.” 

It’s not always easy to create true connections with candidates, especially with the demands of time and energy already on educators’ plates. However, cultivating a sense of connection and belonging among recruited teaching staff cannot be underestimated. Here’s what one principal learned after realizing that the hiring process in her community focused too much on efficiency and breadth, rather than connection and depth:

“I used brief virtual screenings, I delegated aspects of the hiring process to my administrative assistant, and, when facing 40+ new hires in one summer, I intentionally eliminated aspects of the hiring process that consumed extensive time (tours of the building, 40-minute demo lessons, visiting classes with each new hire)... And although I find this terribly embarrassing, these new hires did not feel valued or appreciated… So when the district next door offered $2 more per hour, the financial incentive was the resounding factor in their leaving midyear.”

Fortunately, this school leader’s story ends on a positive note. She found success by implementing “candidate speed dates” and teacher tryouts as part of the recruitment process. These strategies gave her team a chance to get to know candidates as well as candidates the opportunity to learn about their potential colleagues and school culture.

Take a look at these tips for cultivating relationships as part of the recruiting process itself:

• Lead with a connection-first approach from the very start. It makes a world of difference to candidates who feel welcome from the moment they connect with a potential employer. It’s the little details that count, like knowing how to pronounce a candidate’s name correctly and recalling personal details they shared. 

• Get to know candidates beyond their “hard” qualifications. Look for “softer” skills and a candidate’s potential to grow. That way, recruiters spot teachers who may be great long-term investments (with the right support and professional learning). 

• Prepare all interview participants for successful relationship-building. As most candidates’ future managers, building administrators play a critical role in setting the tone during the hiring process. But principals may not realize just how influential their behaviors and approach during interviews can be. Here, coaching can help prepare building leaders to use effective interviewing methods that help them put their best foot forward.

Create excitement: Get candidates fired up about your organization

As hiring teams cultivate their communication and connection strategies with candidates, they must also create the excitement among them about opportunities to join a district community! This is where branding comes into play. 

Joshua Siler with Forbes explains branding as “a mix of aesthetics, experiences, and values that people associate with a company... [it] covers all aspects of the HR cycle and extends past that into the [organization’s] culture.”

These days, candidates have a wealth of information about potential employers and their culture easily available at their fingertips. Siler points out that 75% of job seekers investigate a company’s reputation before applying for a job. However, if companies are found to have a ‘bad reputation,’ at least half of job seekers may refuse to work for that organization — even with a pay increase.

While a district cannot control all information shared about the organization, it can build a narrative around the positive aspects of its culture as HR teams engage with potential new teachers or building staff. Here are a few tips for crafting a district’s brand during hiring:

• Emphasis a sense of purpose when sharing about your district. Reed Screening suggests that recruiters “highlight their mission and values, showcase the impact of their work, and create a sense of… meaning for applicants.” For example, if a district serves unique student populations such as migrant or newcomer families, the recruiter might point out those programs offered at campuses that are designed to help these students integrate into a new community, culture, and language. Better still, why not share real examples of staff who exemplify collaborative engagement with newcomer families? 
• Demonstrate how the organization engages its guest staff. Though more transient, guest staff play an incredibly important role in supporting schools to keep learning going when teaching staff need to take time away (or if there are vacancies yet to be filled). How a district treats these more transient members of the community can reveal a lot about their culture and support for other staff members, too. Remember, substitute engagement is just as essential!

Clarify systems: Keep processes tight, efficient and crystal-clear

Slow, outdated, or redundant processes create more headaches for a recruiter during peak hiring season. When time and efficiency are of the essence to fill vacancies, even minute gaps or gray areas can become big pains.

Applicants feel the discomfort, too. CareerPlug found that nearly two-thirds of job seekers walk away in the middle of filling out a job application due to excessive length and complexity. Another reason candidates may disengage and drop out of the hiring process is how much time the full experience takes, from application to phone screens to interviews to background checks, and so on. 

And yet, as we learned earlier in our article, efficiency at the cost of the first three Cs comes with serious consequences. The key is to focus on clarity with processes, not just operationalizing them.

These approaches ensure hiring and recruiting processes are crystal-clear to all involved:

• Simplify the application process wherever possible. Not all parts of the application can be skipped or eliminated, but there may be ways to streamline how candidates fill out that information. It’s common practice for applicant tracking systems to allow candidates to pre-fill fields using LinkedIn or PDFs of their resumes. Red Rover Hiring goes a step further and allows candidates to auto-populate new applications using past or previously saved ones across different roles.

• Leverage AI to automate or kickstart certain tasks — within reason! While AI certainly has its pitfalls and challenges for schools, it can still greatly reduce time spent by helping educators with more administrative or repetitive tasks. Red Rover Hiring, for example, can generate customizable job descriptions using a proprietary AI tool built into the solution. A human touch may still be necessary to fine-tune AI’s output, but these tools are worth considering to regain time and energy for what matters most. 
• Find the right partners in modern workforce management. It takes more than the right tools to support a district’s entire hiring process. Having the right vendor relationship can be the difference between a district having a solution that evolves alongside their needs or having to get out of a long term contract with a subpar vendor. 

Ready to uplevel your district’s 4Cs of candidate engagement? Reach out to learn how Red Rover Hiring can help!