We spoke to Adam Watson, Director of School Improvement at Inspiring Primaries Academy Trust, about how saving thousands on recruitment costs has enabled them to put more into schools to make a difference to the children.
“Before we started working with MyNewTerm, we had nine offices across the trust, all running their own recruitment processes. It was really time-intensive. We couldn’t do it anywhere near as well as we wanted to as a trust. It didn’t feel professional. It was just taking up a lot of time, which was pulling people away from what we really wanted them to be doing. Our focus should be on school improvement and improving outcomes for our children.”
“We discovered MyNewTerm about a year ago. I was sitting in a conference and Wayne was doing a talk about effective recruitment strategies. We were looking at different ways that trusts across the country were accelerating their recruitment. This meant they were not having to spend so much money. Consequently, they could focus on improving schools and getting the right people into their schools.
What really made the difference was when Wayne started talking about references. That is one of the bugbears we have in our trust. We were generally sending out a Word document. People were opening it up on their phones and not wanting to fill it in straight away because they couldn’t edit it on their phones. We weren’t getting the references back, so it was slowing everything down.
Although it seems like a small thing, it really made a difference to our application process as a trust. I remember coming back and talking to our HR Manager, who comes from outside education. I described what MyNewTerm does, and she said, ‘That’s what most industries have now – apart from education!’ It really solves that problem for us.”
“Thinking about the results we’ve seen as a trust over the last 12 months – well, it’s been quite incredible.”
“About 18 months ago, when we were advertising, we were using some of the more expensive platforms and getting maybe three or four applications. Just last week, we ran an advert which we shared on social media. Apart from MyNewTerm and the DfE Vacancies website, we didn’t share anywhere else, so it didn’t cost us anything. We got 18 applications for a teaching job which is just fantastic. The applications were really good quality as well. There were so many good applications that we over recruited. We put some extra teachers in some of our other schools because it was too good an opportunity to miss.”
“18 months ago, we were advertising across a number of recruitment platforms and each of the schools were having to do that from their budget. It was taking thousands of pounds per school to fill recruitment needs for the year. What we’re able to do now is do that all centrally for a fraction of the cost, again saving the money so we can put it back into schools to make a difference for the children.”
“If anyone is on the fence of whether to move to MyNewTerm, I really would encourage them to. This is simply because of the cost-saving and time-saving benefits of it. Just having that one person who can work in a central office and manage recruitment across several schools saves so much capacity. You can put that capacity back into the schools. It will save leaders in schools no end of time, and knowing you are 100% compliant with Keeping Children Safe in Education is a weight off your mind. When you do get that Ofsted call, you can sleep well the night before!”
To learn more about the applicant tracking system of choice for recruitment in the education sector, get in touch here with the MyNewTerm team today.
