School Districts Using Twitter and Facebook to Recruit

Education is a sector that has traditionally relied on newspaper advertising for recruiting new employees.  In the last year, school districts have been going online to recruit new employees by utilizing sites like Makeafuture.ca; niche job boards such as CGA BC; and social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

Under Make a Future, districts' teaching job vacancies are broadcasted across Twitter and Facebook networks every day.  With just under 600 followers on Twitter, Make a Future reaches a large network of educators in BC and across Canada.

It's not just teaching jobs that are broadcasted on Twitter, but also senior level and executive level positions like Vancouver School Board's Director of Instruction vacancy and Coast Mountains school district's Director of Human Resources position.

"We've found that social media tools like Twitter are great low-cost tools and high engagement ways of advertising for difficult-to-fill job vacancies, and it's even a better way of connecting to job seekers that are interested in the education sector – many of whom do not know what opportunities exist and where to find them," says Andrew Jang of Make a Future. Relative to newspaper advertising, social media is a low cost medium that leverages the power of networks and word of mouth referrals to recruit employees.

"In the past we helped school districts buy newspaper advertisements, but since we've refocused our efforts on online and social media strategies, we've reduced school district recruitment budgets by thousands of dollars."

Seeing the communications benefit of social media, districts such Abbotsford, Peace River North, Vancouver, Nisga'a and Langley are all active users of Twitter.

Connect with Make a Future on Facebook and Twitter to get updates on current "hot jobs" and links to useful resources for educators.