Top Tips for Recruitment and Retention in Early Years

This weekend I was asked to be on the Childcare Expo Share and Support stage talking about the challenge of Recruitment and Retention. Here’s some top tips that I shared with attendees:

1. Indeed is still a good place for adverts. You no longer pay for applications but instead set a daily budget. Don’t expect free advertising to work.
2. Always be hiring. Make sure you do not let talent pass you, if they are interested in your setting, see how you could make it work.
3. Make work fun. What are you doing to make your workplace a fun place to work. If it is fun it doesn’t feel like work at all.
4. Safeguard your workplace culture. Be very protective of your workplace culture. Don’t hire people who don’t align with your values and beliefs.
5. Ask Criteria Based Interview Questions. By asking your candidate to tell you a story you can see whether the story lacks details. If it did it probably didn’t happen!
6. Ask for them to show you they have done what you need them to do. Here’s a great example when interviewing a potential manager. “Talk to me as if you are an angry parent”
7. Ask candidates about their values. VBI questions are increasingly popular.
8. Use trial sessions as part of the selection process.
9. Make sure you deliver on your values. If you aren’t Generation Z who seek purpose will not stay.
10. Hire people with the right attitude over the right qualifications. We can’t change attitudes.
11. Bring back a sense of community. Back in the day, my store had a Dangerous Sport Club where we would organise experiences such as quad biking and clay pigeon shooting. We were a community.
12. Make sure the workplace is psychologically safe. Foster the psychological contract. The contract of employment matters but the psychological contract matters more.
13. Focus on becoming an Employer of Choice.

We hope these are useful. Our Recruitment Challenge ebook is available here.