‘As rare as hens’ teeth’.  What does that even mean? It’s a saying I’ve used many times to describe what it was like when I first started recruiting ECE teachers for BestStart ten years ago.I was brought on as a recruitment coordinator to support our then 70-odd centres to employ enough ECE teachers for the pending requirement of 100% ECE qualified and registered teaching teams. 

Now I have just googled the saying and oddly enough, apparently hens’ teeth aren’t as rare as the saying might suggest, in fact there is one breed of chickens called the Talpid who have a complete set of pearly whites.  Ironically you could say the same for ECE teachers in today’s labour market.  There are still plenty of them around, however, to attract and employ the high quality, experienced teachers, you need to be at the top of your recruitment game. 

It’s no longer a one-sided game.  A good teacher will spend just as much time during the recruitment process assessing you and your centre as you do them.  This must be front of mind throughout your process; how do I best present my centre and team during recruitment, as well as receive all the information I need. 

Great interviews are key.  You need to prepare an awesome set of interview questions.  The old adage “You get back what you put in” is so true for interviews.  If you drag out the same old set of standard questions you have been asking for the last 5 years, you’re going to get the same set of standard answers you’ve always got in return.

Preparation is key here, really read their CV and think about their experience.  What are the things that most interest you about where they worked and what they did there?  Make that the basis for some deep digging questions.  To be clear, I am not encouraging you to ask the stock standard “Tell me a bit about your last job”.  Sure, that can be a good lead in, but from there you really need to put on your detective hat and begin to piece together the story that sits behind that. 

I’m not saying you are looking for ‘dirt’, I am saying you use your open-ended, probing questions to really understand what their role was there, and more importantly how they went about it.  This can take you on all sorts of tangents and that is part of the process, so hang in there, keep probing. This is when you get to the good stuff, the fundamentals of their knowledge and how they go about applying it.

Once you have established the hard skills, it’s just as important to turn your attention to the soft skills.  In fact, in ECE, when the success of a room is completely dependent on the communication and engagement of the teaching team, you don’t want to employ someone without understanding what role they are likely to play in your team.   Your starting point here is always your existing team.  Talk to them, what do they see as their current strengths, what kind of person do they think will best fit with them.  Once you have an idea of whether you are looking for a total extrovert, a conscientious compliance follower or an out-of-the-box thinker, you need to come up with some questions to help uncover your interviewee’s personality. 

Google is your friend here and no, I’m not suggesting you replicate one of Google’s famous “if you were a 5c coin stuck in a blender” type questions.  However, Google the search engine has literally millions of interview questions available to you.  Ask them to send you some questions about digging into someone’s team approach and then just read through the results until you find one you like.  It’s pretty simple.

Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions, good teachers will respect you for it

Lastly, don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions.  In fact, the really good teachers will respect you for it.  If you give a run of the mill interview, then you are telling that high performer that you are completely okay with average, you are not reaching for the stars and are happy to hire someone equally as average.   Ask them the curly ones, ask them to really dig deep into their last inquiry and understand just how hard they worked to get the best outcome for the inquiry (and therefore our children).  Ask them some difficult questions about sticky situations (and I’m not talking play dough on the carpet here).  A high performer will rise to the challenge, and if they don’t in the interview, you can be sure that they will stew on it on the way home and fire you an email the next morning with a smart, well-polished answer. 

Being a smart interviewer is not easy.  You need to be prepared. You need to assess skills, experience and values, then weigh them up with the skills and values you are looking for.  You need devise a plan to uncover exactly where these intersect, all the while demonstrating to your potential teacher that you are a smart, organised manager with high standards, someone he or she would be lucky to work with.   In today’s market, where great teachers know their worth, be smart, be prepared and show your worth too. 

Amy Wilkins is the HR Manager for BestStart and has been supporting their recruitment for over 10 years.