The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

Teacher Recruitment bonuses for staff increase quality candidates applying to Houston’s best school

September 21, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Many organizations have referral bonuses for employees who help recruit new folks onto the team, but I'm not sure how many schools have something like this.  In the coming years, we will grow to serve 10,000 students at 13 campuses and our teacher recruitment needs will be critical.  Not only will we need to increase the number of candidates we are entering into our recruitment pipeline, but we will need to increase the diversity and quality of those candidates as well.  Even more challenging will be the necessity to attract many more candidates in pipelines that have traditionally been very slim.  It doesn't take an experienced school recruiter to know that it is a little bit more difficult to find a high school physics teacher than a middle school English teacher (no offense MS ELA teachers, that just means it is more competitive!).  Obviously, we are never afraid to face big challenges at YES Prep and with more pressure to attract, select and develop the best educational leaders in the country we are excited to continue thinking of new ways to find great people.

One thing that really worked for us in attracting teachers for the 2010-2011 school year was our teacher referral bonus program.  Its pretty simple, but here are the basic tenets of the program:

• INVESTMENT:  Let your people know that they can make a difference in the composition of the team!  At YES Prep, we are constantly reinforcing this message in weekly staff notes that each campus sends to staff to email signatures and even in voicemail greetings.  Yes, most voicemail greetings at YES Prep will say, "Hi, this is (insert name) at YES Prep (insert campus) where we are always looking for great teachers.."  Because this is ingrained in our culture, everyone is all of the sudden a teacher recruiter.  Besides, attracting 150 teachers a year cannot be done with any quality by one person.  It takes a team. 
• INFORMATION: Keep your people informed.  As soon as I see applications come through that were referred to us by current YES Prep staff members, I immediately send that current staff member a thank you email, let them know that we got an application from someone they know and then commit to keep them in the loop about that person's status.  Of course, we aren't able to divulge all of the confidential information that occurs during the selection process, but a staff member who has referred a friend has a vested interest in the candidate's progress and that relationship between the current staff member and the prospective one is still important to us regardless of the outcome.  So, we will send the referring staff member an email with an update about interviews and any final decisions to keep them informed.
• INCENTIVES: Finally, we create incentives.  When a staff member refers someone to our team and we end up hiring that person, our staff member earns a $500 bonus coming in two installments (one at the beginning of the school year and another at the end).  We have some teachers who will seriously augment their income this way and we are happy to pay those bonuses.  Additionally, however, even if a person doesn't get hired, every staff member that referred someone that applied is entered into a raffle.  We randomly choose three people from that raffle and they get to select from some pretty fun prizes including Bose speakers, Houston Galleria Gift Cards and digital cameras. 

This program helped us attract 34 new staff members to our team for the 2010-2011 school year and we are anxious to start recruiting again for the next school year!

To learn more about how you can help us serve 10,000 students and prepare them for college graduation, visit the Work at YES Prep section of our Website!

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