Navigating the Teacher Shortage: 6 Steps to Establish a Compelling Talent Brand

by | July 18, 2024

The teacher shortage is a crisis we can’t ignore. The countless stories I hear from friends, family, and educators on the frontlines make it clear that our education system is under immense strain.  Our schools continue to face significant hiring challenges and the days of having a plentiful pool of qualified teachers are long gone. We’re now in a new era where schools must compete to attract top talent.

This shift is not something that schools and districts can afford to ignore. To thrive in this new landscape, school leaders must elevate their recruitment strategies. You must sell your school. This means making it abundantly clear why your workplace is the best choice for them (while simultaneously making it the best choice). You have to invest in your talent brand

Your talent brand includes the authentic story of what it means to be a teacher at your school, shared widely to attract value-aligned and high-quality candidates. Let me be clear: it’s not about dressing up flaws as features. Both your current staff and prospective candidates will see right through that. Instead, work with your team to uncover what’s really great about your school. If you can’t quickly come up with solid answers, it might be time for some soul-searching.

Building a strong talent brand is more than just slogans and fancy brochures. It’s about creating a workplace where teachers thrive. So, how do we turn all this into action? It starts with a lot of listening. Let’s break it down into steps.

Here are six steps to creating a compelling talent brand:

  1. Understand Your Team: Ask your team Why did you choose to work here? What makes it special? What makes it hard? What does leadership do well to support you and make it less challenging?
  2. Listen Deeply: Gather direct feedback and resist the urge to immediately respond.
  3. Capture Key Themes: Uncover patterns across the responses that paint a picture of what it looks like to be a part of the team.
  4. Create a Plan: Develop an actionable roadmap to address glows and grows. Include strategies to better connect teams to your values, mission, and district story.
  5. Define Your Value Proposition: From here, develop your school’s talent-focused unique value proposition—one that readily answers the candidate’s inherent question “What’s in it for me?” when they engage with your brand. 
  6. Create Your Guide: Take your value proposition, mission, vision, and values and compile them into one clear guide. This resource will serve as a source of inspiration and a reminder for anyone involved in the hiring process about the collective goals and what makes your team truly special. Weave this into your communications across various channels to ensure prospective talent understands your purpose, your culture, and the benefits of joining your team.

Not only does this ensure consistency across the hiring spectrum, but your team’s unified communication also provides candidates with a preview of what to expect from the moment they step through your doors on their first day.

Creating a talent brand should be a team-building experience. Education is purposeful and impactful work, and having a culture that honors and celebrates its people is a powerful opportunity. Once your talent brand is defined, it’s all about living it out and protecting it. Any threats to it must be addressed, its authenticity upheld, and teams empowered to embody it. 

Quite frankly, the stakes are too high to lose qualified candidates because they have no clear picture of how a career at your school is better for them than the school across the street. While I would never claim that talent brand work alone can fix a systemic issue (because it can’t), I do believe that those who ignore the story being told about their workplace will be infinitely worse off. 

Do you have a great team and culture in place, but struggle to create messaging and resources that articulate this? Matterlab works with schools, districts, foundations, and nonprofits to create and launch their talent brands to attract values-aligned candidates. Reach out here to learn more.

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