The Future is All About Talent Attraction

A hot button topic of discussion is how we attract great talent to Louisville Kentucky. Through Teach Kentucky, a local nonprofit established to recruit and retain new teachers, we have a template for a national recruitment strategy. Over 13 years, we have honed a recruitment system to entice the brightest of the nation’s college graduates to teach in Kentucky’s public schools. This system is based upon strategies and tactics that we believe are worthwhile for broader application to enhance Louisville’s future. The five primary strategies of this recruitment system are:

1. A clear and transparent application process
2. Proven recruitment and selection methods
3. A combination of digital recruitment tools coupled with an emphasis on forging personal connections
4. A focus on showcasing the community that will embrace new residents
5. A comprehensive induction process

These five strategies not only effectively recruit bright and ambitious professionals to the community, but also increase the likelihood of their long-term retention.

TKY application process

In this emerging digital age, every job search contains a digital component. In TKY, we strive to create a transparent roadmap of the entire application and selection process as well as the eventual teacher experience so that our candidates can fully envision their future lives and careers in Louisville. This is not an accidental process, but rather one that has taken a great deal of time to design, execute and constantly evaluate. We always ask ourselves the question, “Are we giving our candidates what they need to navigate a complicated online application, admission, and employment process?”

Each year TKY receives 380 or more initial applications and guides candidates through an extensive multi-level application process that overlaps with Jefferson County Public Schools and UofL’s College of Education. We track 70 fields of information for each candidate who makes it to the finish line and ultimately, a new cohort of 26-30 are employed as new teachers in Louisville.

Proven recruitment and selection methods

We believe the seeds of long-term retention are sown in the recruiting process. The extent to which you set expectations correctly and then demonstrate your organization’s commitment to keeping its word, you set the framework for an extensive career for the recruited employee.

So, in order to truly attract the nation’s best and brightest college graduates to become public school educators in our community, we have identified a series of extremely high academic performance standards as a major component of a very competitive selection process. TKY targets candidates that score in the top quartile on their subject specific exams as well as on a general skills exam for graduate students similar to the national ACT. Candidates are expected to have GPAs above 3.0 and are often from the most selective colleges and universities in the country, including many Ivy League institutions.

To attract these highly sought after applicants we use internet guerilla tactics: free postings on college career websites, direct email campaigns to self-identified prospective teachers and personal calls to career advisors. We have stopped on-campus recruiting trips because of the cost and lack of student interest.

But TKY realizes that academic performance alone does not make a great teacher. A final assessment includes a personal interview process that requires candidates to demonstrate their ability to communicate and convey information at a very high level. Taken together, these measures drive selectivity to a one in 10 acceptance ratio – likely one of the most competitive in the country.

Personal connection

In addition to designing an effective digital process, we believe that cultivating personal connections with the candidates is imperative to exceptional long-term outcomes. This begins with a phone call from the founder of TKY the moment a new application is submitted. From the candidate’s perspective this conversation is billed as a “chat” to relate the mission and purpose of TKY as well as inform them of the lengthy application process to become an educator in our community. For TKY it serves as a quick pre-screening tool to assess whether or not a candidate is a likely finalist.

Cultivating this high-touch, personal connection from the beginning may be counterintuitive to some recruiting professionals; however, we find that it gives us reliable information more efficiently than an elaborate series of digital requirements. In short, after this 10-15 minute conversation, we know if we have a strong candidate, or not. We don’t ask for the candidates to “sell” themselves to us, but rather ask us questions about our program and our community. Their questions are far more illuminating than any “pitch” they might make about their qualifications or suitability. The candidates who ask thoughtful questions reveal a greater depth of intention and clarity of purpose, qualities which we seek in our teacher candidates.

Promoting the Louisville community

Recruiting non-native young people to Louisville has its strengths and weaknesses. TKY recognizes that individuals need to believe that there is a support system in place in order to move to Louisville. We focus on developing nurturing relationships between candidates and Louisvillians during the recruitment process. If we can convince candidates to move here, they are likely to be happy and satisfied with the community and how their life fits into it. Unfortunately, recent college graduates not from the region have rarely heard of, or know anything about, Louisville.

The primary way in which we combat this challenge is by insisting that all of our serious candidates come for a weekend-long recruiting visit. Built into this structure are informal connections with our current teachers, a time for candidates to spend time “on the town,” and time for veteran teachers to show recruits the lives that they have built in Louisville. This intimate and informal connection helps our veteran teachers relate their satisfaction with the community. Finally, there is a large-scale community dinner to demonstrate the broad community dedication to our efforts to recruit new teachers. The caliber and breadth of participants in this event astonishes our new candidates and makes them believe that if they move to town there will be numerous, well-connected Louisvillians who care about their success.

It’s not over until you induct

The final element of recruitment is induction. We employ a number of tactics to ensure that our new teachers feel welcome to the community. We host a welcome reception and participate in a series of summer events that include the free concerts at Willow Park, Waterfront Wednesdays, and planned visits to local sites. We thoroughly acquaint our new recruits with the physical community of Louisville while also organically building a set of peer and multi-generational personal connections. By the end of their first summer in Louisville, our TKY teachers can navigate the whole community, have formed friendships with peers to enjoy the benefits of young adult life in Louisville, and have a multi-generational set of connections that make their lives robust and dynamic. Collectively these strategies have resulted in very high retention rates amongst our participants – 70% staying beyond their two-year commitment and 60% making Louisville their lifetime home. Additionally, they are remaining in their chosen vocation of public education, a huge “win” for the community. Frequently, they become some of our community’s emerging leaders in public education. Finally, as one additional, serendipitous benefit, they are bringing a half-person on average to Louisville, showing the power of Louisville’s appeal to the family and friends of these new, deeply-committed Louisville residents.

We believe that the strategic mixture of these elements is essential to an effective and comprehensive recruitment and retention strategy in bringing and keeping human capital to Louisville. Learn more by checking us out online at www.Teach Kentucky.com.

Rowan Claypool is a Yale graduate, social entrepreneur and committed Louisville resident. He is the founder of Teach Kentucky, an innovative non-profit committed to attracting the best recent college graduates to teach in Kentucky public schools.