One of the Key Actions of the Educator Pipeline committee is to attract and recruit qualified teacher candidates both locally and nationally. Finding the highest quality teachers is often accomplished through recruiting efforts at local and national job fairs. During the 2015-2016 school year, hundreds of prospective applicants were able to speak to district and school administrators about working in the Boulder Valley School District. The purpose of job fairs is to recruit a wide range of candidates in an effort to ensure the most qualified teacher is hired from the broadest and most diverse pool of applicants. Recruiting nationally is more important than ever as the number of students graduating from teacher preparatory programs in Colorado has decreased by 25% in the past 5 years.
In addition to job fairs, the Human Resources department has rebuilt the Jobs@BVSD webpage which offers prospective candidates an overview of the compelling reasons in which to work for BVSD. We have had an overwhelming number of visitors since the new page launched on February 2, 2016.
The final main recruiting effort used by BVSD is building relationships with universities across the country. BVSD belongs to the American Association for Employment in Education (AAEE) whose primary goal is to connect university teacher preparation programs with school district’s hiring personnel. We often reach out to our university partners when looking for hard to fill positions.
Below are a few statistics about our recruiting practices.
- 12,380 unique visitors have viewed the Jobs@BVSD webpage during the past 4 months
- 231 prospective candidates attended the BVSD Diversity Job Fair on April 9
- 16 job fairs were attended by district and school administrators
- 5 states visited the Jobs@BVSD webpage most often
- Colorado, California, Illinois, Michigan and Texas
- 5 different job fairs focused on the recruitment of bilingual and bicultural teachers/administrators
- 4 states were visited for recruiting purposes
- 2 job fairs were hosted by Boulder Valley School District
- BVSD Diversity Job Fair
- BVSD Student Teacher Job Fair
- 1 job fair was ‘virtual’ which enabled BVSD to interact digitally with candidates throughout the country
By Melissa Ribordy, Human Resources Director, Jerry Anderson, PhD, Principal, Monarch High School and Barbara Kase, President, Boulder Valley Paraeducators Association
Tri-chairs, Educator Pipeline Priority Action Team
Tags: diversity, employees, hiring, job fair, partnerships, recruiting, Success Effect, talent