Hiring the right School Business Professional (SBP) can be a tricky proposition, especially as schools are more used to recruiting teachers and teaching assistants. Whether the vacant position is for a School Business Manager, a Marketing Manager, a Director of Support Services, a Bursar, or a Finance Officer, it can be a difficult exercise.
So how do you find the most promising candidates and how do you ensure the recruitment process enables you to hire the right SBP?
We have asked the ISBL team to provide some top tips to ensure your search gets the best results.
To find the right person, you must provide clarity on what credentials are important and what you want the new person to achieve. It’s imperative to have a clearly defined job description. Without this you risk fielding multiple applications from people who are either under or overqualified for the position. The target is to reach people who can come in and hit the ground running, rather than having to teach them the role.
On the ISBL website, we have created an interactive ‘wheel’ that outlines key SBP disciplines: Leading Support Services, Finance, Human Resources, Procurement, Infrastructure and Marketing. Click on each one for detailed definitions of each job function, including the knowledge required. This is an excellent resource if you are starting a job description from scratch.
The purpose of a job advert is to inform potential candidates of an available position, whilst providing all the information they need to decide whether they should apply for the role. Importantly, it must grab the reader’s attention and ‘sell’ the job to them. A long list of tasks or a lengthy job description will not work.
Before you start, take a look at online adverts for similar roles. Think about which ones hold your interest and which ones leave you cold. Learn from the good (and bad practice) of other schools recruiting for similar roles – in fact, you might be competing with them for the top talent.
Start with the essential information, including job title, location, salary, and benefits. Avoid advertising a ‘competitive salary’ - this reduces application numbers. People tend to use the salary to gauge their suitability for a role, so always state a salary or salary range.
Include some positive information about your school or organisation. Does your description make it sound like a place where you would want to work? Keep the job description concise and snappy - bullet points can break up text. It is an advert, not a full job description. Too much text in an advert is off-putting.
Importantly, read it back and ask yourself if you would respond to the advert.
When you have created your advert, where should you place it? Where are your potential candidates looking for a new job?
It is always worth advertising through industry hubs. The first place to start is, of course, the professional institute. At the Institute of School Business Leadership website, SBPs can find the most relevant new roles. You can find details on how to place a job advertisement here.
Other industry sites to consider are www.tes.com and The Guardian.
In addition, don’t forget job boards, such as Indeed and LinkedIn. You can sometimes advertise (in some form) for free and these can be very effective.
Finally, don’t forget to utilise your local networks, post on social media and remember to advertise the role on the school website. There may be a parent out there looking for a school-based role!
When you are looking to hire, you need to present your school or academy group as a great place to work - but you shouldn’t wait until you are advertising a new role. Promoting the school must be an ongoing activity.
For instance, the school website should be a celebration of both student achievement and inclusivity. But it should also highlight the positive working environment and the activities of staff members. Whether it is dressing up for Halloween, celebrating success or raising money for charity, there is no harm in sharing the community activities of your team. Social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, are valuable tools - use them to present the school as a fun place to be. This coverage will be enticing to potential candidates when they are researching and deciding whether to apply.
The obvious downside of using a recruitment agency is that they can be expensive. You will be expected to pay a proportion of the starting salary in agency fees. However, like those ‘no win, no fee’ adverts you see on TV, it is true that you will only pay if the agency succeeds in finding the right person.
An agency may be worth considering if it is hard to fill a position or if the vacancy is particularly niche. An agency will have a larger reach and may find candidates that otherwise may not have applied.
Schools work hard to create safe environments for pupils and staff, tackling bullying and discrimination. The same effort should be applied for recruitment. Make sure that your processes are free from prejudices and potential discrimination.
This includes addressing unconscious biases, which, by definition, can be hard to avoid. If you are unaware of bias, how can you tackle it? There is a wealth of material online offering advice on how to avoid unintentional favouritism. For instance, we can feel more comfortable with people from similar backgrounds to ourselves, through shared cultural experiences.
Simple procedures to help can include:
When interviewing a candidate for a job, your goal is not to catch them out or put them on the spot. Your aim is to find out if they will thrive in the role and be an asset to the school. In an interview, the objective is to create an environment where they can share their experiences and offer a vision of how they will make a difference.
It is important to ask open-ended questions that encourage the candidate to speak openly. Questions that work well start with:
These questions allow the candidate to draw on their experiences, which is important as past behaviour in the workplace is a good predictor for future performance.
It can be useful to apply the ‘STAR’ interview technique when assessing the answers of a candidate. When talking about a previous experience has the candidate outlined the Situation, Task, Action and Result? Did they present a positive outcome?
Other useful indicators include: Do they make eye contact? Are they polite to your receptionist? How do they engage with people you introduce them to when you show them around the school?
Hiring the right School Business Professional (SBP) for your school
The interview process can be time-consuming, but it is better to invest time and effort at the hiring stage than to cope with a bad hire. One interview will not suffice. You always need the opinion of more than one person. It is also a good idea to set a short task to see how they apply themselves.
Finding the right person is hard, but the more effort you put in, the more likely you are to attract and keep the best talent.
Become an ISBL member to access our regularly updated resources. In addition, you can browse our thought leadership blogs and gain valuable insights in school business leadership practice, here.