A full circle moment: From the classroom to Nimble
As a former classroom educator and teacher recruiter, I know how important it is that our kids have effective teachers. My time in the classroom was formative, difficult, and ultimately life-changing. When I decided 3 years ago to leave the classroom for teacher recruitment, I found myself amid a pandemic hiring season — one that would bring a number of challenges. I faced low applicant volume, numerous bottlenecks in our process, and the occasional principal skirmish over prized applicants!
I knew there had to be a better way to move the strongest candidates through our process faster while ensuring that each principal had a fair shot at staffing their building. My team sought a solution and in the summer of 2021, I was first introduced to Nimble and their founder, Lauren, who had been a teacher recruiter herself at D.C. Public Schools.
After a demo with Lauren, I remember feeling ecstatic about Nimble's potential to drive real change — and I was right. Nimble quickly revolutionized how we brought in talent.
Nimble increased the diversity and size of my applicant pool:
Nimble’s easy-to-use application allowed candidates to apply on their phones — something our old ATS had not been able to do. This increased the accessibility of our entire application process. And, because Nimble automatically synced to several big-name job boards (think Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc.), candidates were quickly made aware that we were hiring.
Nimble provided transparency for principals and reduced bottlenecks:
With our old ATS, we’d used spreadsheets to coordinate the process. Nimble’s pooled posting infrastructure and school applications automated this, allowing leaders to submit their vacancies and see where candidates were across the hiring process, even within shared talent pools. This saved me time fumbling through my spreadsheets and built trust among principals in network leadership and the hiring process.
Nimble provided real-time data on my pipelines, vacancies, and hiring progress:
Rather than having to craft complex formulas in my spreadsheets, Nimble’s easy-to-access dashboards gave me an at-a-glance view of my pipeline and essential data points like applicant source, diversity metrics, conversion rates, and volume. This allowed me to speak confidently with our principals and other stakeholders on our progress toward being 100% staffed by day one of school.
When the opportunity to join the Nimble team came across my desk, I was ecstatic — I was being called back home to a mission I'm deeply passionate about. I joined the team here at Nimble because I have seen firsthand the impact that this product can have and I deeply believe in its potential to ensure that our kids have strong, effective teachers.
