James Sanders wrote below in 2021 about how to hire teachers when recruiting and interviewing moved online. A section after the article adds the 2024-25 federal vacancy figures, what one published study found about virtual teacher interviews, and a practical sequence for school leaders.
When hiring teachers post-COVID, in many ways, little has changed. However, in many ways, everything has changed since the onset of the pandemic. At the very least, hiring teachers has become much more challenging. The number of available, qualified teachers has dropped significantly in the last 12 months. If you are a teacher, it is a seller’s market. And if you are a school district or independent school, there are many things you should know to improve your odds and make sure you can find the most qualified talent available.
It’s a Digital World Now
The first thing to remember when recruiting and hiring teachers is it’s a digital world now. Virtually everything to do with hiring is now done through a digital lens. Forget about the standard in-person job interview. In the same way, classes became virtual, so have every aspect of your recruitment effort.
The good news is that you have a lot of tools at your disposal. Everything you learned about delivering content online can be used to recruit teachers. Take advantage of your social media accounts, including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, to talk about your job openings. Assume that your next great teacher could come from anywhere. When you talk about your job openings, be sure to mention the district’s positive aspects, location, professional development, and more. You can also make recruitment videos for each position and send these out through social media. Make sure that your HR department is actively talking to your marketing department.
Start with a strong job ad
When you write your job listing, remember that you only get one chance to make a first impression. It is a bit of a cliché, but it is also very true. The copywriting and the tone of the listing are very important. It needs to sound warm and inviting. Imagine you were looking for a position – what kind of an impression would the listing make with you? Is it boring or exciting? Are the benefits clearly stated?
Where are you advertising your listing(s)? Just the usual places? Are there other sources in which you can be seen? How are you tying in your social media to this job listing? Are you using video? Have you considered mentioning job openings in your blogs?
Is your recruiting limited to specific job openings? Experts say 50 percent of your recruitment advertising should be used for non-specified openings. In other words, you should be spending half your effort talking about what a great place your school or district is. If you wait until you have an actual job opening to advertise, you have already lost.
Make an effort in all your recruitment advertising to talk about COVID your safety protocols. This is still front and center in the minds of teachers. Just get that out of the way, including some specifics. If people know you are a safe place to work, they can focus on the benefits of working there.
Create a solid virtual interview process
Create a virtual hiring process and practice, practice, practice. Get it down to a science. Your virtual interview should not be identical to your in-person interview. Place special attention on making the candidate feel welcome. And again, I can’t stress this enough, practice the virtual interview with members of your staff and community. You should have at least a dozen virtual practice interviews under your belt before you conduct the actual interview. As your first interview is winding down, go ahead and schedule the second interview while you have the prospect there in front of you. Plan on at least 45 minutes for the first interview and schedule the second interview for no more than a week in the future.
Your second interview can be with more than one member of your team, but it is important to keep the first interview one on one to ensure your candidate is comfortable.
Here are a few more tips for the first interview:
Over-narrate during the interview: Narrating helps replace the non-verbal cues we’re used to during in-person interviews. Candidates can’t see you’re reaching for a resume or looking at the clock on a virtual interview the way they can in-person.
• “First, we’re going to do XYZ, then we’ll speak about your experience.”
• “I’m just looking at your resume here” or “I’ve got your resume pulled on the screen.”
• Replace the pre-covid handshake with a go-to term to indicate the interview is over, like “This concludes our interview, and I would like to schedule our next visit on Tuesday at 2:00. Will that work for you?”
• If you haven’t done so already, make sure your process is as tech-friendly as possible. Use DocuSign for offer letters. Have your forms ready for references and background checks.
Try Before You Buy
Avoid buyer’s remorse by trying a candidate before you buy. If you have the opportunity, use a service that gives you an opportunity to trial a teacher. You first hire the candidate as a substitute teacher and test out how they’d fit in the role. The company will pay the candidate as a substitute. You get to see whether they are a good fit for teaching pedagogy, culture, etcetera. In turn, the candidate gets to see a candid experience of the school to see if the fit is right for them as well.
When hiring post-COVID, remember that everything has changed. Job candidates are now living in a virtual world and expect to be recruited and hired virtually. The good news is you can use what you have learned over the past year to make a wonderful virtual impression and take advantage of social media and marketing to seal the deal.
For more information, you can contact James Sanders personally: james.s@scoot.education.
- The Washington Post – D.C.-area school systems recruit exhausted teachers for summer instruction — with varying success
- edCircuit – 5 Essential Screen Sharing Tips for Teachers
- Education Week – 4 Ways Districts Are Giving Teachers More Flexibility in Their Jobs
How to hire teachers in 2026: what the latest vacancy data show and what virtual interviewing has settled
How to hire teachers has changed since James Sanders wrote above in 2021, and the federal data for the 2024-25 school year give leaders a clearer picture of where hiring is hard. Sanders describes a market in which qualified candidates are scarce and recruiting is done online. This section adds the most recent national figures this publication could check, what a published study found about virtual teacher interviews, and a practical sequence for a district or independent school that wants to hire well, including how to read a teacher resume after COVID-era career gaps and changes.
What the 2024-25 hiring data show
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) asked public schools about hiring in its School Pulse Panel. In a press release dated October 17, 2024, NCES reported data collected from 1,392 public schools in August 2024. Schools averaged six teaching vacancies and had filled 79 percent of them with fully certified teachers before classes started. Seventy-four percent of schools had difficulty filling at least one teaching vacancy with a fully certified teacher, down from 79 percent a year earlier. The most common obstacles were a lack of qualified candidates (64 percent of schools) and too few applicants (62 percent, down from 70 percent).
The difficulty was not spread evenly. Special education was the hardest teaching area to fill in elementary and middle schools, at 74 percent of schools in each group. In high schools, ESL or bilingual education was hardest (69 percent), followed by physical sciences and special education (66 percent each). NCES notes that the School Pulse Panel is an experimental data product, which means it may not meet every NCES quality standard, so the figures are best read as a national snapshot and not as a count for any one district. Leaders who want to look further into special education staffing can use the edCircuit special education guide.
What a study found about virtual teacher interviews
Sanders advises practicing the virtual interview and narrating each step aloud. Research on the effect of virtual interviews is thin. One published study, Laurie Kimbrel’s 2021 article in the Administrative Issues Journal, interviewed school administrators about how virtual interviews changed their teacher hiring process. It is a qualitative study, which means it reports what leaders said and did, and not measured results such as teacher retention. Kimbrel found that leaders using virtual interviews moved toward more reliable selection practices: screening resumes more carefully, asking questions meant to reveal candidates’ values and effective teaching behaviors, using authentic assessments of skills, and reviewing teaching artifacts in digital portfolios. The leaders did not deliberately base these changes on research, but they saw their practical value and said they intended to keep at least some of them.
That study cannot show that virtual interviews produce better hires, and this section did not find a recent evaluation that compares virtual and in-person interviews on quality of hire or retention. A leader can still use the findings as a prompt for the steps that went beyond the interview itself.
A practical sequence for hiring teachers now
- Know which positions are hard to fill. If special education, ESL or bilingual, or physical science positions are open, expect fewer applicants and start recruiting before the vacancy is posted, as Sanders recommends above.
- Read each resume against the job. Kimbrel’s leaders screened resumes more carefully. A teacher resume after COVID may show remote teaching, a change of grade level or a career break, and a screening rubric that names the skills the job requires helps reviewers compare candidates on the same terms.
- Ask about values and teaching behavior. Questions that ask a candidate to describe how they handle a specific classroom situation give more to work with than general questions about philosophy.
- Use an authentic task. A sample lesson plan, a recorded lesson or a portfolio of student work shows teaching practice directly. Decide ahead of time who will review it and what the criteria are.
- Practice the process. Sanders recommends many practice interviews with staff and community members. Practice reveals technical problems and unclear questions before a candidate meets them.
- Keep the process timely. Sanders suggests scheduling the second interview within a week. The NCES data show that applicants are scarce, and a slow process gives a candidate time to accept another offer; that last point is a judgment and not a finding of the study.
Sanders also describes a trial arrangement in which a candidate first works as a substitute through an outside service, and the contact address at the end of the article is on the scoot.education domain, so readers should keep in mind that the advice may come from within the hiring-services business. A leader considering that kind of arrangement, or any hiring service, should ask for the district’s own data on retention and cost, because this section did not find an independent evaluation of the approach. For teacher development after hiring, the edCircuit professional development guide collects related reading.
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