Facilitating remote hiring during Coronavirus
UPDATE MAR 30: We'll be keeping a repository of virtual hiring resources here. Please email us at hello@hirenimble.com if you'd like to contribute resources or have any questions!
With the spread of Coronavirus, many things are uncertain for our schools and the students and families they serve. While district leaders are grappling with questions around at-home learning, they also have their long-term goals to worry about. For talent leaders, this crisis comes as the hiring season starts to pick up, meaning that they must not only support existing employees through school closures, but also continue to pursue next year’s staffing goals.
Research has shown that often teacher candidates who apply earlier in the season are more highly qualified, which means that if you press pause on hiring now, your schools might be losing out on the strongest teachers for next year.
But, how can we continue the hiring process, in the midst of school building closures and social distancing? Here are some tips and resources to help:
First, if your central office and/or schools are closed and your teammates are working from home, empower them with strong remote work tools. As a fully remote team, Nimble uses Slack to supplement email and communicate in real time. Any organization can use Slack’s base plan for free, and nonprofits and education organizations can access their upgraded tiers at a steep discount.
Second, consider transitioning to a remote interview and onboarding process. For Nimble customers, this means leveraging our Calendly and Zoom integrations to facilitate — and help school admins facilitate — remote interviews or onboarding sessions (reach out to us if you need help setting this up). Zoom has also made their paid pricing tiers free for schools during the crisis, so any school-based organization can tap into this valuable resource. Additionally, tools like Hirevue have temporarily expanded capacity for their existing customers.
Third, leverage video teaching demonstrations to replace school site visits. Many school districts already ask teacher candidates to upload a short teaching demonstration video as part of the application process. These can be in front of live classrooms or not, so teachers who don’t already have portfolio videos can still record a TFA style demo lesson while school is out. Nimble customers can simply add a teaching demo question to their posted jobs. Don’t forget to provide sufficient guidance to ensure applicants are comfortable with the process.
Lastly, Nimble customers can reach out to sign up for a free working session to help transition your team to a fully remote hiring process.
For other districts and charters who would like assistance transitioning to remote hiring, we are offering free working sessions to get your team started working remotely as well as 6 months of free access to our remote hiring tools for as many school partners as we can. If there's any way we can help you, simply fill out this form, select "Coronavirus assistance" and a team member will reach out to you as soon as possible.
We’re anxious to find ways to help in this time of crisis for our schools and students, so please don’t hesitate to contact us if we can support you!
