Is TES overpriced?
Price hikes for schools looking to sort out their vacancy issues.
How has your recruitment strategy fared as of late? Do you feel it’s been underwhelming? Lacking? Outright poor? For a lot of schools, 2022 started off horribly. They were greeted with the foreboding realisation that their recruitment strategy is not as effective as they would like while costing them thousands of pounds. Ask yourself this, why would you pay so much for something that doesn’t guarantee the results you want? Education recruitment is already incredibly difficult as it is, it’s hard to imagine that so many schools out there would settle on this stubborn refusal of change. A Telegraph article released earlier this year reported this about TES;
“Ministers have attacked such outlay as ‘wasteful’ and ‘expensive’. Tes previously disclosed to MPs that the cost of advertising a typical secondary school vacancy was about £1,000. The then-education secretary Damian Hinds said in 2019: ‘Why spend £1,000 on a service you can get for free”.
Alongside the release of this article, school leaders have confessed that they’ve been looking at different avenues since the start of this year. The sentiment seems to be shared amongst many decision-makers within schools that a change is needed.
Schools have historically struggled to fill in certain roles as it was already, those being teaching assistant roles and support roles. Many schools have admitted to throwing way too much money at the problem, not realising it will just boomerang back at them in a month or two. A big part of the problem is that many schools are not looking into the matter of education recruitment more seriously, with many HR managers and marketing heads confessing that they see recruitment as more of a necessary evil, rather than something that can be managed in an exciting and progressive way. Many of those same school leaders have told soccialy how difficult it is to pry themselves away from Tes recruitment, as they have been a staple in many schools’ arsenals for tackling recruitment. They’ve been around for a very long time so it’s understandable that many would rather stick than twist. But there are new, exciting technologies out there that are more cost-effective and allow for a fresh approach to finding talent, you just have to look.
“As the HR Manager, I decided that we should start moving away from TES as a subscription package, as it was costing us thousands for our recruitment needs. I was astounded by the cost of this particular job board. As part of our D&I strategy, I began to investigate alternative recruitment media alternatives and a new approach to recruitment.
With soccialy, I learned that they could use their AI to target niche audiences that would allow them to pinpoint a certain demographic through strategic and subtle social media ad placements. This ability to nano-target, coupled with the fact they could save us significant amounts of money led to a change in the school’s recruitment strategy. I noticed that despite a reduced number of bulk applicants, the quality of applications remained high; the majority of applicants were able to be shortlisted for interviews leading to successful appointments.
Even at this early stage, I would recommend that schools consider utilising socially as part of their recruitment strategy.” – Dionne Morrison, HR Manager
How Can soccialy Help?
soccialy takes your vacancy, and with our AI, targets people that will fill your role perfectly via social media. Why social media? For a slew of reasons, fewer and fewer educational professionals are actively visiting job boards as frequently as they used to due to job comfort. Another reason is that everyone is on social media almost all the time! Not everyone is actively using a job portal, simple as that. soccialy takes your role and puts it in front of great candidates on a platform they spend huge amounts of their time on, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. This proactive style of targeting is precise, subtle, and effective. It’s the forward-thinking choice and the one that a lot of high-end candidates prefer. The feeling of their ideal role, based on their ideal location falling into their lap in a seamless manner is something that a lot of people actually prefer, as opposed to skimming through hundreds of jobs that may or may not be relevant.
soccialy respects, appreciates and listens to its schools. It treats them like actual people, not just another ID number. Those thousands of pounds schools are losing could be used to fund much more impactful projects for teachers, students, and support staff alike. Where schools feel they are stuck choosing between TES and the free-to-use state-run job portal, we sit in between the two, soccialy is a perfect choice. Don’t bet on the old Goliath, have a chat with soccialy, the exciting newcomer.
