Every day’s a school day: How Reach ATS transforms school and college recruitment (and why it might be time to start believing in unicorns)
Recruiting for the education sector comes with its own set of unique challenges. Application processes for education differ compared to standard recruitment practice, and candidate attraction in this specialist, competitive market requires a skill set of it’s very own.
From nurseries and preschools to colleges and multi-academy school trusts, each institution faces its own recruitment challenges. Whether it’s hiring teachers, teaching assistants, lecturers, directors, or admin staff, a streamlined and efficient recruitment process is essential. This is where an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) like Reach can make all the difference.
Creating an efficient, cost effective, and engaging recruitment process might feel like asking for the impossible. But a good quality ATS recruitment system really can do all that for you. Team it with our unrivalled candidate attraction service and suddenly anything feels possible.
Read on to find out how Reach have reimagined education recruitment for you.
Why should I use dedicated applicant tracking software for recruiting in Education?
Educational institutions face a myriad of recruitment needs. Not only do you have a huge variety of roles to fill, but you also need to ensure the right candidate fit for different teaching levels and specialities.
The recruitment process for primary school teachers is very different to that of a college lecturer. Add in recruiting for multiple schools across an academy trust and the complexity increases further. Finding recruitment technology that can adjust to all these factors and reduce your admin burden can feel like asking for the moon on a stick!
Using a dedicated ATS simplifies the recruitment process by automating your routine tasks, allowing you to focus on finding the right talent. Reach’s recruitment ATS streamlines and speeds up your hiring process with features like automatic electronic reference collection before interviews, online contract signing and the use of disqualifier questions at the point of application. It also merges seamlessly with third parties to complete pre-employment checks such as DBS and Right to Work.
Will an ATS adapt to my recruitment process?
Does the perfect recruitment software exist? So often, when we buy software, we have to live with its shortcomings. Nothing you buy ‘off the shelf’ ever fits perfectly, right?
Wrong! When you use an ATS with customisable workflows, like Reach, the software is tailored to your unique needs.
Imagine how it feels to use an ATS that has been designed around your workflows instead of you adapting to its limitations…
One of the standout features of Reach ATS is its flexibility. The platform can be personalised to cater to the specific needs of different departments or faculties within your education institution.
Our customisable software also allows you to easily switch up your application process when needed, to adapt to specific role requirements. That might mean shorter application forms for non-teaching roles or offering online interviews (we fully integrate with Teams) to teachers who are looking to relocate for the role.
Whether you are recruiting for a multi academy trust or a single institution, Reach can build you dedicated recruitment pathways that streamline and expedite your hiring process. Don’t dream it, believe it!
How can an ATS help with data reporting?
What would it be like to really scrutinise your hiring data? Information is everything. The more you have, the more you can refine your recruitment, saving you time and money.
Reach ATS has superior data reporting capabilities which automatically help you refine and optimise your recruitment. Any information input onto our system can be used for reporting, meaning you can segment it and devise your own reports to scrutinise hiring information to inform your hiring strategy – your data, your way.
Whether you’re keeping an eye on DE&I, trying to work out where most of your applicants see your ads, or even checking your role retention rates, using an ATS means you have all that and more, at your fingertips.
And data isn’t just about reports. Using ATS recruitment software also enables you to keep on top of your GDPR requirements: automatically asking applicants to confirm you may hold onto their data and purging that data for you once your rights to it expire.
It really is a data-driven dream come true.
How can an ATS enhance the candidate experience?
Recruiting in a competitive field is all about standing out from the crowd. If your job description is lacklustre, or your application process onerous, you’re not going to attract top talent. They’ll be long gone.
You need your job description to sparkle, your application process to be smooth and compelling and, above all, you need to keep the lines of communication open. But that’s a lot for an (often) small team to do. Which is why an ATS is the perfect solution.
Reach ATS centralises all your recruitment documentation and actions, meaning you and/or your team can view all live vacancies and candidate progress, including any outstanding personal or team actions, from one unified space.
Candidates benefit from a bespoke portal where they can keep track of their application status, check messages and complete tasks. Additionally with a variety of login options (via emails or socials) they can also keep on top of their applications from any device, anywhere.
With automated scheduled communications, prompts for actions and a user-friendly interface, the candidate journey becomes a joy for everyone involved. It seems you can actually have your cake and eat it!
Can an ATS help with Targeted Advertising and Candidate Attraction
In short, yes. And also, no.
Advertising for educational roles requires precision. An ATS can help you post to job boards. It can help you store and build job ads and streamline the request to hire process. It’s a great way to automate and speed up your job approval and advertising process. With the click of a mouse your job ad can be speeding its way through the ether to land on a job board. Automating this process is particularly helpful for roles you regularly advertise.
But when it comes to targeted advertising and candidate attraction, you just can’t beat the human touch. And that’s where our brilliant Advertising and Candidate Attraction Service really comes into its own.
Reach has extensive experience working with the education sector. It’s our team’s job to ensure your job ads are on the right job boards. Whether it’s niche local job boards for teaching assistant vacancies in North Wales or higher-profile platforms like The Guardian for director-level positions, Reach ensures no budget is wasted on ads in the wrong places.
Reach have been involved with candidate attraction for decades. So, we really know job boards and understand their quirks and nuances. We know how to tweak job titles and search terms, to make sure our ads are seen by the right candidates.
For instance, a school might be looking for a ‘hygiene operative,’ but a candidate might be looking for cleaning jobs. It might seem like a tiny detail to you, but details like these can make or break a job ad. We know your audience, which is why we’re unrivalled when it comes to our Candidate Attraction and Advertising Services.
Recruitment is expensive. How can I make my hiring budget go further?
Budget is important. And budgets, as we all know, are particularly tight right now. But that shouldn’t hold you back from finding top talent for your institution.
An ATS can be incredibly cost effective when it comes to recruitment. It speeds up time to hire, streamlines your recruitment process, merges effortlessly with other HR software and third parties and saves you huge amounts of admin time. When you’re working with a small hiring team, this in itself is invaluable.
Using a candidate attraction and advertising service is also a great way to make that hiring budget go further. Whether you have an ATS or not, a Candidate Attraction & Advertising service is a really effective way to save money.
Our advertising service buys huge amounts of job board ads each year. This gives us superior buying power, which means we can get you premium job credits for a lot less than you might pay yourself. We call it pay power! You’ll get the visibility you need without having to go searching for a magic money tree, or a pot of gold at the foot of a rainbow!
Nothing’s impossible.
You see, when it comes to applicant tracking and candidate attraction, if you can dream it, we can do it. And we probably already have.
Our simple but smart ATS provides a bespoke solution that simplifies and expedites your recruitment process. It optimises your candidate experience and boosts your advertising too. Whether you’re hiring for a single school or an entire academy trust, Reach offers the flexibility and expertise needed to make your recruitment process efficient and effective.
Recruiting for educational institutions comes with its own unique set of challenges, but with Reach in your corner, anything is possible. Perhaps it really is time to start believing in unicorns…
Discover the full overview of the Reach ATS System features or book a demo today.