Hiring, onboarding, and training new teachers requires a significant investment of time and money, and Perris-Union Schools knew they could save a lot of both by reducing new teacher turnover.
By screening candidates more effectively before they even arrived for their interview, they felt they could hire teachers more likely to thrive in their district long term.
In a typical year, they would have to let go more than 20% of first- or second-year teachers because they simply weren’t a good fit.
It wasn’t helping students achieve their best, and it was costing the district valuable resources.
Looking for a way to improve hiring two years ago, they found PowerSchool Candidate Assessment. Kirk Skorpanich, Assistant Superintendent of HR at Perris-Union High School District, says the goal was to reduce the number of teachers they were non-reelecting, or dismissing, within their first two years of teaching. They’ve now minimized teacher attrition due to job performance. Skorpanich says they’re more confident than ever that each new teacher they hire will make a positive impact on students.
We recently had the chance to speak with Skorpanich about how they’re using Candidate Assessment to reduce teacher turnover and hire more effective teachers.
Here’s a small excerpt from his story:
Have you seen a decrease in the amount of time your team spends doing interviews?
We haven’t spent less time interviewing, but what we’ve done is get the [Candidate Assessment] report, look to see who in that pool of people we’re going to interview, and then use the individualized questions it recommends instead of having to make up our own.
We’re still asking the same number of questions, so the interview still takes about the same amount of time. But the questions we’re asking now are different and are based more closely on how they actually scored on the assessment. It’s better than me asking a simple question like, “Tell us how you’d manage your classroom.” We think that’s paid off because we’re starting to see people having to draw upon their personal experiences when they’re answering questions.
How do the rest of your district staff members feel about using Candidate Assessment?
They like it. Our principals say the quality of our interview selections now is better than before.
I’ve been in the district for three years now, and I know before that they would put out a recruitment for, let’s say, a math teacher. We would get a pool of maybe 50 people apply for the position. Then the hiring managers would handpick the ones they wanted to interview.
There wasn’t a whole lot of set criteria.
One of the first things I said when I started was, “We’re going to be standardized in terms of using objective criteria to screen candidates. Then we’re going to bring in individuals to interview from there.”
How do you feel about asking candidates to complete the assessment?
I don’t have a problem with the time it takes. I just want to make sure I get the right person. It’s one of those things. If you’re not willing to spend 45 minutes to take an assessment to get a job, then you’re probably not willing to stand out in the rain trying to help supervise kids, either.
The advantage of Candidate Assessment is that it’s online, so they can do it on their own time when it’s convenient. They could do it on the weekend, the evening—they just have to set time aside to concentrate on it. As it relates to staffing shortages, we can hire right the first time. It minimizes the number of positions that we need on the back end.
The amount of time it takes to hire 14 people is quite a lot. Last year we should have had to non-reelect 15, based on how many we hired the previous year. But it was down to one. In a time when we have shortages, finding 14 teachers is a lot harder than finding one. So, I have no problem with the time it takes them to complete the assessment.
