Using the Hiring Process as a Competitive Advantage in K-12 Talent Acquisition

JOSH TOLAN: Alright, Alex. Let’s start if you could just tell me a little bit about yourself.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah, Alex MOSEMAN. I’m the Executive Director of Talent Acquisition here in Knox County Schools, in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’ve been here for a little over a year and a half now and have been kind of in the K-12 game, so to speak for, like, twelve years now – just in sort of different capacities, either as a teacher, recruiter, district official, all the above – and spent a little bit of time in higher education as well.

JOSH TOLAN: Very interesting. So what was the catalyst for the transition from a teacher position into the HR and talent side?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I taught on the far east side of Indianapolis, and I think quickly saw that, you know, you can have great curriculum and PD, and all of those things, but really it comes down to the people on your team. 

You know, someone who grew up playing sports all of my life. And I really wanted to be in a position to try to make sure that we had just great people across the board on all of our school teams. So I think that experience as a classroom teacher led me kinda down a security path to get into human resources and talent.

It’s just been really cool. It’s been exciting to be a part of folks’ career journey.

But also to have, you know, the people on your team or how you end up being successful and to be a part of that at a district level is really fun.

JOSH TOLAN: Absolutely. And have you – when you made that switch – have you always been on the talent side of things, or have you covered broader HR or what’s been kind of the path for you?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I’ve always been on the talent side of things. I always—I like to tell folks I think you got indoor dogs and outdoor dogs and insert who does – You got the PD folks, and I’ve always been more of a territory recruiter. What’s your quota? Tell me how you hit your numbers. All of that. 

And so I’ve had to learn, you know, the development side of things, but I’ve been more focused on the events we’re going to, who we are partnering with, and how we expand our reach? How are we thinking about, you know, the funnel and conversion rates and how are we projecting out – you know, one month, three months, three years, to make sure that that we’re doing what we gotta do to make sure the district has, not just the right – not just enough talent, but the right talent.

JOSH TOLAN: For sure. And have you noticed throughout your career that there is a certain district size, whether it’s the number of students or the number of schools, where you see that delineation? We work with a lot of districts, and many of them just have a centralized HR department that also handles recruitment. So, at what point do you see the branching off into specialization?

ALEX MOSEMAN: It’s a great question. I don’t know that there’s so, like, my team also handles some of that development stuff because I think it’s hard to delineate those things. And I think really there’s probably only a handful of districts across the country where they’re large enough to have the capacity and the bandwidth to really silo things from really just focusing on kind of inbound recruitment to the sort of full-cycle components of what does it look like to develop and retain staff.

So, I mean, it’s hard for me to give a specific number on where I think that split is, but I think it’s substantial.

And I think for most big districts or most districts period. I think you’ve gotta live in both camps at all times because, you know, I think it – while, it may sound cliche – like, the people you gotta recruit first or your current staff, and how do you make sure those folks are back on board for next school year as you’re also thinking about what’s the available talent to bring in, from outside of the district as well. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah. That’s a really good point. And I think that’s also one of the unique challenges when you’re hiring or you’re in HR at a school district is, you know, unlike maybe a private, you know, organization or business, you have to have the staff, and you have to have them on a very specific timeline because the school year starts. And so you’ve you need the people. 

And so I think it’s a good point that first, you need to sure that you’re retaining the people that you already have, or that creates a bigger need to now go out and hire even more people on a very, you know, strict timeline And so I think that’s one of the things that’s unique, you know, about recruiting in K-12. Would you agree?

ALEX MOSEMAN: I agree. I think, you know, I always try to explain to folks I think we forget sometimes the level of urgency that school districts do operate within.

You know, every morning, kids are showing up at seven. Like, no matter what we decide, kids are gonna be here. And so we’ve gotta have a plan in place for what that looks like, both on the instructional side of things, but also obviously on the side. Like, who’s who’s gonna be there in the morning when kids get there.

And as much as, I think folks pay attention to, like, the summer’s off type of thing, like, it’s a very short six weeks for most places. And so, there’s a real intensity to how we do this work because our peak and hiring season is, in the spring when, like, folks are ready to try to wind down the school year.

And so there’s just a lot that has to happen in a really short condensed amount of time. And so it’s just really, really important for us to be as proactive and aggressive as we possibly can to make sure that we build the right teams.

And we’re always kinda trying to trying to think six nine months ahead of time, and do so in a context where there’s just a tremendous amount of variables that can change.

Certainly from, like, month to month, but even day to day in terms of, who’s doing what, what schools are where, what enrollment looks like in any specific one school. All of those things can shift pretty dramatically from you know, we post positions typically first week of March and we welcome students back, typically the first week of August, and there’s just sort of a world difference between those two places. 

And so building the systems and the team to be able to kind of have that perspective and to build those processes that can be, proactive and aggressive and, have the types of capacity and scale that we have to hit to make sure that, you know, on August eight when kids walk through the door that they have a great teacher in their classroom.

JOSH TOLAN: For sure. I wanna back up for a little bit and just also get a little bit of a background on the district that you’re currently at – How many students, how many schools, you know, what’s everything look like?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yep. So, Knox County Schools is the fourth largest district or the third. Sorry. Knox County Schools is the, me back all the way up. Knox County Schools is the third largest district in Tennessee. We have about sixty thousand students.

Ninety ninety-four schools. Little over a thousand employ or ten thousand employees, about forty-five hundred teachers.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. That’s a lot then on your shoulders from a recruitment standpoint. How does that play out, you know, when you start the busy hiring season you know, how does that translate to number of roles open typically?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yep. Yeah. I think, you know, we, like, most districts across the country have been kind of navigating what staffing in K-12 looks like, both through COVID and and sort of after COVID now. I think we’ve been really fortunate to make some strong investments in staff. 

So our our district retention rate, you know, not as high as we’d want it to be, but right now, we’re kinda hovering around that ninety to eighty-nine percent of staff retained, which means that we anticipate hiring at least on the teacher’s side, somewhere between four hundred and fifty and five hundred teachers, in a given hiring season. 

And so, obviously, the work is to try to figure out how to invest in staff in a way where that sort of need-to-hire number comes down. And then ultimately we can be a little bit more selective on the front end and and and start to shift that focus from, you know, having enough of enough people to enough of the right people, as we think about hiring across history.

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah. For sure. And what’s the makeup of your team look like that’s responsible for hiring?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. So we, talent as like a department is new for KCS.

As of last, or is new as of June of twenty-two. So I have one person whose full time focus is like recruiting, like, the inbound lead, like, how do we convert somebody to a hire?

And then, I have one person who manages all of our alternative cert programs. So someone who might be transitioning to the classroom, what are the different EPP or educator prep pathways that person has access to? Knox County also runs its own educator prep program. So for individuals who are getting licensed to teach in a in a CTE, a career technical education classroom, we run our own EPP.

So you know, we like to say we have these future-focused academies. It also requires us to sort of mirror that back to the workforce. And so, if somebody wants to translate industry experience into the classroom, the KC is the vehicle to do that work in a classroom. And so I’ve got team of kind of three full-time folks focused on different types of pipeline work.

And then we also have a regional structure to try to make the district feel a little bit smaller even though it is quite big. So we have five regions across the district. Each one of those regions has an HR liaison, who I kind of would refer to as like the customer success person. That’s who they go to to, think through, you know, any number of staffing issues or or HR issues that they have in their building.

So kind of all all in a team of, a ten and sort of split almost halfway in the middle. I like to think of it as like we’ve got one thing that’s kind of product. One team that’s customer success, and they’re both kinda providing feedback back and forth.

And then think about our principles as, like, our primary customer in this work.

JOSH TOLAN: Got it. Yeah. I mean, first of all, not a huge team to cover four hundred hires in a matter of months. So super impressive that you guys get it done, what types of challenges does that present for you from a resource standpoint? 

Like, do you guys rely on other people within the district to help with recruitment or know, how do you amplify your efforts? Because, you know, I know they’re all kinda working cross-functionally, but at ten people, four in a rolls, forty rolls per forty hires per person in just a few months. That’s a lot.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yep. So we have a staffing operations team that’s like the people kind of processing some of that work. So I would say that’s a separate team, but that’s also it’s not huge. It’s like eight people, total including kinda clerical staff.

I would say just in terms of the strategy, I mean, you nailed it. It’s, we know we’ve gotta find or sort of invent new capacity that we have not had in the past because I’m of the firm belief that, like, speed and efficiency is what wins in this game, whether we’re in a district or in a private sector. 

It’s how fast and how wide can we set that net for available talent and then how well can we match those folks to the right roles, here. And that’s where I’m going back to, like, kind of intensity of a K-12 hiring season, really, it kicks off.

You know, last week of February, first week of March, and you’ve got essentially three months to get the job done.

So we rely a lot on trying to build, what I like to think of is like sticky pathways where, like, “How can we put in front of somebody an opportune just tell us what they’re interested in and then generate a lead that we are cultivating and nurturing into the right place?” And so, what are the ways in which we’re decreasing barriers to access to that?

I’m worried that my legacy in KCS may be stickers, but we have these like join KCS stickers that people have all over the district that have a QR code links to a very simple lead form. Lead form automates back an email from our recruiter. And that’s, like, just we try to automate as many of the first initial, like, lead steps as possible. 

Again, not a thing that’s, like, gonna be earth-shattering for someone coming in from like a private sector role or just really have done a lot of the work on the sales side, but I think something that a lot of districts haven’t necessarily spent a ton of time resources on is like how can we get as close to converting that person in as personalized a way as possible with as little capacity from, like, active work from the team. And so that’s one example.

But I think building off of that simplicity, it’s how do we make sure that we’re, I would say, democratizing the work that we make because that interaction can be so simple and so accessible. How do we get that into the hands of as many people as possible?

So that’s the big goal is like our North Star is always no matter who you are, what your background is, if you wanna teach in Knox County Schools, and you take a couple simple steps as just filling out, like, an information questionnaire, we can get you, you know, one or two clicks away from the exact right thing that you need to be doing. In a matter of hours.

JOSH TOLAN: Interesting. So you’re cultivating these relationships with people that aren’t even in K-12 potentially at this point in their career, and you’re guiding them to what they need to do to get into the district. And it serves as like a whole another talent pool versus just going after existing teachers.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think so, like, yes, existing teachers and current undergrads are a big, like, a big chunk of our market, but I think what we’ve really relied on is the strongest strategy we could possibly have is to say is to be able to answer that question of no matter where you’re starting from, if we can answer the question of how you get there.

That ultimately is gonna build the most comprehensive strategy for us, which then is gonna free up additional capacity to invest back into the once you’re in a classroom or once you’ve started that onboarding process – we now know a lot more about that person and have had a clear singular path what they’re what they’re going down that helps us understand the different types of investments we’ve gotta make to make sure that we support those people. 

And I would say the risk is trying to make sure that we’re not developing almost this, like, so this morning in a meeting, like, this whack-a-mole approach to, well, we’ve got this one type of pathway in for this one profile of person.

And then there’s this whole other thing if you’re a traditionally trained teacher or you have teaching experience. It’s more that we wanna set a clear common bar for what we mean when we say a great educator in Knox County Schools, and then say that where you are along that path may be different we’re gonna have the systems and supports to get you there.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And I think in some ways, like, you hear this a lot in the private sector about employer branding. I think what you guys are doing with this program and nurturing those relationships with candidates that want to get into a career in K-12. That’s almost, like, your version of the private employer branding where you know, that’s putting you guys and setting you apart. Is that the way that you look at it?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Absolutely. I mean, I guess it sort of depends on, like, when this episode comes out, but I would say, watch this space, as they say. We are, we’re very close on that on that front to having a more, like, codified employer brand.

That we’ll be able to use as that platform for how we talk about what it means to work in Knox County Schools.

Absolutely. I mean, I think my orientation has always been, especially in the large district. 

We have to stop thinking of ourselves as, like, competing with only districts or competing just for, like, new graduates or whatever and just put a stake in the ground and say, “Working and Knox County Schools is a great place to work. Full stop.” 

Not sort of as a separate bar for what it means to work in K-12 or nonprofit or government or whatever is that we compare ourselves and compete against private sector entities across our landscape.

And so I think we know and acknowledge the challenge that it is to compete as a K-12 organization against you know, more private sector or corporate employers.

But that’s what our community deserves, and that’s what our students deserve. 

JOSH TOLAN: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And you also hear just broadly about, you know, the teacher shortage, the teacher shortage. And so I think by casting that wider net, you know, you somewhat offset some of those other challenges and maybe there’s not as many people that are on the market that are current teachers in order to fill, you know, the number of roles that you guys have to fill.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. And I would say, like, I mean, you brought up teacher shortage, so I’ll do my, my spiel on it. But, like, I always try to push people to reframe it just in the context of that, like, that competition for great talent is high. 

And, like, as a district, we have to compete for that. And I think – it’s important I think for us to to frame the challenges around staffing as an opportunity for us to think differently rather than to consistently come back to. We just needed more teachers because I think that becomes kind of a vicious cycle. 

And and, like, a lot of the solutions that you hear in those conversations are the same things that we should be doing to really value our staff and value the role of teachers.

And so I think it is, again, just comes back to, like, making sure that we’re being competitive for people who are great. Full stop.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And because you have to compete with organizations in the private sector, what type of – I don’t know if it’s challenges or it’s more just things you have to do that are above and beyond what maybe your typical school district would do to compete for that talent with, you know, organizations or maybe investing and more tools or have more resources because, you know, they’re private. So what does what does that present for you?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think that the first thing is just resources. Right? Like, I think we sort of forget sometimes that as a school district, we have a very limited ability to influence the amount of revenue we have. And ultimately, our job is to figure out the most competitive and efficient way to allocate those resources.

And the majority of that is gonna be through compensation. And so, competitive compensation is always gonna be kind of the most challenging component of what we do within a school system.

So I think it’s important for folks to focus on that and have a really tight lens on how they’re being really efficient with their time and resources to try to make as many investments in employee compensation as they can. Recognizing that there’s still a financial reality that every district has to work within. And so I think it’s like how do you squeeze more out of everything you’ve got to make sure that you’re paying people competitively. 

And then once you’ve done that, I think it’s then trying to figure out how do you extend and build value, that sort of employee value conversation we started to have about what are the ways in which you can, make sure that all of who your staff feel seen and heard and valued what are the messages that both your your leaders at the school level, but also the district level are acknowledging the importance and the value of their staff members how do you create space for community partners to come in and just say the teachers are appreciated.

Sort of one question that we’ve been kind of as a rallying cry around, teachers in Knox County is this idea of what would it what would it look like if every day were teacher appreciation day in Knox County.

And so what are the ways in which you extend the investments you’re making around compensation, to be something that folks really value above and beyond the dollars that they’ve got in their pocket. So I think that’s the through the next place that I would I would encourage folks to think about is like how do you actually build that value?

And then the last thing, I think you hear about this a lot. It becomes, I think, the place that folks go just because it’s a controllable thing for districts. Is professional development. I think it’s important to invest in those things, but I would push folks to go beyond just, like, I think there’s a lot of sit and get PD and districts and really think about what are the, like, growth based coaching structures we have. 

I think every district is thinking about student growth. I would push folks to think as much as they can as well about employee growth and what are the systems and structures you have in place to make sure that, as a staff member, my coaching cycles are much more about growing and less about compliance.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And that fulfills, you know, two purposes for you on the talent side, right, with retention. Meaning, you don’t have to hire as many people if they feel like the district’s investing in their own professional development. And then as a way to attract new talent, you know, when you can show them all the things that on the professional development side, it makes your job easier as well.

How would you say, or how do you view the hiring process as a differentiator? Like, you know, when I talk to a lot of folks, especially on the private sector side is, you know, they talk a lot about how they use their process because to your point, it’s a controllable thing. And so they use their process as a competitive advantage. Like, hey, if we can move faster or more communicative with candidates, you know, our hiring managers or stakeholders are giving us feedback faster so we can get back to people faster.

You know, that plays out in the candidate experience. That plays out in the candidate’s exception of you as an employer. So how do you view that as, like, a differentiator? Not only against other districts, but against just any employer you’re competing with.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I would say I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, I think the first thing for us is to try to make sure that that experience for someone in hiring process that they’re also learning about the organization as they do it. 

I think, I think a lot of places are sort of making this shift, especially districts are making this shift from, you know, five, ten years ago, they had plenty of people. And so they didn’t necessarily have to think about the way in which they were, you know, not just selling, but like positioning their organization as something that people should want to be a part of.

But I think it’s about how you communicate that brand or that experience to folks in that hiring process. And so, one of the things that we’ve done this year is in the virtual interview process that we have.

There are some videos loaded into that. They’re essentially like almost sort of short commercials that folks watch so that by the time they’re finished interviewing with us from that initial step, they’re gonna leave having understood the types of district investments we’re making around PD early literacy, college and career access, success for every student.

And so I think that’s one piece of it. Think the other thing that we’re doing is trying to make sure that for every challenge that our hiring managers face that we’re developing something that’s like a small tool that can be a competitive edge.

Whether that’s like templates of resources that they can use, or just hearing about their their experience around, like, the timeliness of it and helping them set up some type of tiny automation so that they can cut down. You know, I always say, like, cut down a task to take fifteen minutes to five minutes, you can do three times as much work now. 

So one of the ways that we’re, building those systems and structures at a district level But then also kind of getting in the weeds on that hiring process and understanding what our hiring managers are experiencing and and trying to make tweaks and improvements to where they can do that work, faster and more efficiently and ultimately reinvesting back in the candidate experience to where they can be more communicative with a candidate. They know what, they know what they can say, and they can spend more time investing and cultivating someone that they think is great.

And that we’ve done the work on the retention side to try to help hiring managers get a clear picture of what they’ve got on their team and what they need to hire for.

JOSH TOLAN: I do wanna call out. I think that’s a really great use of video in your virtual interview process.

Because I think to your point of, like, how do we increase the capacity of the resources that we have? It’s really important for you to get that message or those messages across to potential employees about all the great things about working at your district, and that allows you to do it at scale and get it in front of them early as early as possible in the process.

When they’re engaged in an interview step. So they’re actually watching it and engaging with that content, and it allows you to, like, move those value props that maybe are reserved typically by men employers to a later stage in the process when they feel like they now need to start selling, but the reality is, like, the earlier you can give candidates the information that helps them opt in to the rest of your process, the better.

So I think that’s a really, really cool use case – 

ALEX MOSEMAN: What I think it’s also, like, if if folks feel like that’s a barrier to being able to do it, like, the use – solving for that use case is also just organizationally beneficial because what it has forced us to do too is get really clear when I say you have ninety sec to tell somebody about why it’s great to work in KCS, that provides a ton of clarity for folks to decide.

These are the three things that I think are important. And how do we clearly communicate that? And then I think the advantage of it being packaged in that way is we know exactly what people have heard over and over and over again. 

And it allows us to really create a level of focus around with the work we’re doing in the district as well because I think you talk to anyone who works in a school system. There’s there’s always plenty of things that we have not gotten to yet that we’re we’re being asked to do. So I think the more that you can also use that hiring process as place to make focus in the work that you’re doing, can help a candidate see themselves as a part of your team.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. And agreed. And when you can reinforce it at every single step in every interaction they’re having with you, whether it’s they’re having it on demand, or whether they’re talking to you, or whether they’re talking to a hiring stakeholder when everybody’s consistent with the messaging, and they hear it over and over again, it just, like, is, you know, really confirmatory for them that this is place that I should be. And I think you hear that a lot.

You know, I know when we hire people at our company, it’s like when we get candidates that end up coming on board or at the final stages, they will often reference the things that stick out to them or the things that they hear over and over again from different people in a different step. Of the process. 

And so I think that makes a really big influence on a candidate’s decision to join you as an employer. And so it’s good that you’re baking that in to essentially every touch point that you’re having with them and you’re just delivering that same message through different experiences over and over again.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah, absolutely. And we’re even more intentional about that when we think about hiring leaders at the organization’s level.

It really sort of—you know—began with the end in mind, where we spent a lot of time with the folks making hiring decisions about leaders and trying to understand, like, what you need to make sure somebody knows before they come and sit down in front of you. 

What do you want to know about somebody before they get there? How do we design our hiring and selection process so that a candidate learns and gets signals about what we’ll expect of them if they are hired for the position?

We do a lot of prioritization. When we can, we give folks a sort of pick what you think is a strength, pick what’s the growth area, reflect on that, and help us understand where you’re coming from. 

But all of that is informed by the way in which we’ve also worked backward from, like, what are the coaching structures? What are the things we’re going to expect from a performance management system that are feeding back into that process? But how is it again aligned to the brand that we want to communicate to people about their experience as a member of the team?

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. That’s awesome. Love it. Alright. Let’s talk about hiring season and then the general hiring process. So hiring season, you said starts I mean, right about now, really, is when you’re starting to get to think of things. So now, which is March for the people that might be to this later, through end of May, early June, like, right before, essentially, school gets out.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Ideally, June, the reality I think for most districts is it’s gonna be, we’re gonna squeeze everything we can out of there. So if we’re if we’re wrapped up by, the second or third week of July, we’ve done a great job have.

I think again, the reality of K-12 right now is it’s a likely kind of we’ll be pulling in the last handful of folks through the middle of August. But, you know, I think go time for us was the last week of February.

We actually start our, like, recruiting process in November, though. So we launch an early interview process every year early. Again, just trying to sort of build the biggest pool we possibly can ahead of when vacancies actually post.

And then when hiring managers can make recommendations, March through, through the end of the school year. So right now is the time, and it’s it’s gonna be a hard fast sprint.

JOSH TOLAN: Yep. That was gonna be one of my questions is, like, leading up to March. What are all the things that need to happen to make sure that this short window you have is successful. You mentioned some stuff in early November, but can you kinda play out, you know, maybe the fall through the winter and into the spring, what that looks like?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yep. Yeah. I think so I think from like a K-12 perspective, I always think that, like, we’re always working kinda three months ahead or behind of the school year itself. So, the the summer when everybody’s out and everybody’s like, oh, it’s great. You’re on vacation. It’s like, no. My my work cannot be more intense than it is right now. And so, once students come back, hopefully, we’ve done everything that we need to do.

We kinda start our, like, and end-of-year reflections. And so we we take kind of August to wrap up everything we possibly can into that school year, September, start to pull all the data and look at trends and analyze the performance of the team. 

Both, you know, at the organizational level, individual school level, try to understand what we saw in terms of time to hire number of fills, turnover rates, all of those types of things that we would sort of say. Okay. Here’s what we saw in the in the nuts and bolts and the weeds. And then what does that mean about the tweaks or tweaks either in process or policy that we need to make in the upcoming school year?

And then start to think about, okay, was that a was that a we don’t have a tool for that or that we didn’t use that system or tool right?

And so that that work kinda happens October through, December-ish. We started running a process this last with our principles where every one of them will get a a talent report twice a year. They’ll get they’ll get one in the fall. So we’ll get an individualized port of here’s how many vacancies you had.

This was your staff retention. We include some staff survey data so they can start to get a pulse on, like, what retention looked like last year. Here’s how your staff’s looking right now. What sort of what sticks out to you.

We try to make sure those conversations want are not evaluative and they’re not prescriptive in the solutions. We wanna hear from principals what they need from us.

So that kinda goes into we do the analytical stuff. We do the quantitative feedback from those surveys and those interviews with principals. We try to understand, like I said, what needs to change, what we need to build or develop what policies do we need to potentially be, like, ready to send for board approval?

I would say that’s another sort of wrinkle in the K-12 world is like we almost always working with an elected board. And so there’s like how do you navigate those policies through the right process if you wanna make tweaks around those things?

And then that’s when we start to get into like budget and staffing design, where we can start to see a picture of more clearly what the the next year might look like. We have kinda rough projections based off of historical trends, but you know, budget formulas, funding formulas, all that stuff can kinda change year to year depending on legislation. And so, start to get in the weeds on that. We get enrollment projections typically to be in January.

At the same time, we’re sort of pedal down and doing as much early interviewing as we possibly can to make sure that when we get to positions being posted in March, we’re opening with a big pool of folks the same time, February, schools are getting their budgets. And then March is when most positions start to get posted. And then from there from March to, you know, June is like you said sort of that hard sprint of trying to fill positions as quickly as possible while still giving folks, the time and space to do a thorough and rigorous selection process.

But again, at that point in time, it’s, I always say, like, we’re folks on execution, like problem solving put that in August. We will figure that out in August. Right now, it’s what we need to to do.

Which makes the sign behind me says “put up numbers, get to yes.” And that’s kind of the the mantra of the team. I like it. From from a from a from March to yeah.

JOSH TOLAN: I like it. I think, look, it just it just really shows the importance of all the prep and planning that goes on throughout the year in anticipation because because of all the roles we have to fill in such a short period of time and because of the challenge we mentioned earlier of like, look, at the end of the day, whenever school starts, seven AM students are showing up, we gotta have the staff you don’t you can’t afford to, like, start making strategic changes or even tactical changes to your process in this busy hiring season because then it’s gonna distract you from like you said, the execution of the process that you’ve already laid out, and it’s gonna prevent you from getting to the numbers that you have to get to in order, to staff the district appropriately.

So I think it, you know, it shows a lot about, like, everything that goes into K-12 hiring behind the scenes and a lot of the work has to happen before hiring season even kicks off. I think a lot of folks think about, like, hiring season as the busy time, but the reality is, like, you’re busy the whole year because of all the prep work you have to do because you’re not gonna have time to to think or come up for air during the hiring season.

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. It’s I mean, it’s funny you mentioned that I was was on a, trip this week with some school staff. And, spring break is next week for us here in North County, and they were saying, oh, what are you doing for spring break? I’m like, I’m going to work. Like, I can’t not be in the office today.

I hope you all rest to recharge just gotta do. But I will be in the office from now until August.

JOSH TOLAN: And well, I hope you get a vacation sooner than later. Get on the beach somewhere and, enjoy yourself after all the hard work of the hiring season. 

Alright. Well, let’s talk briefly. You know, maybe you could just take me through. I know it differs from position to position, but generally speaking, like, what does the hiring process look like, not including the early interviewing, but, like, when you post the positions, you know, what does that whole selection process look like? What stakeholders are involved? How do you coordinate all that and make it happen?

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. I think, you know, that’s sort of like the million dollar question for a lot of districts and certainly KCS is is not unique in that sense. So it we have a decentralized hiring process, and so principals have the the leeway to run their process over they want at the building level.

And so, you know, position post and they, you know, they’re typically gonna do some some version of, like, a written interview, and then sit down or phone interview, and then bring the person in, make a recommendation to the human resources staffing team, and then they’ll sort of vet the application just from a compliance perspective, things like licensure, background check, drug tests, all that.

And that, you know, can vary slightly.

Like I said, across the ninety four schools will make probably about nine hundred to a thousand hires across the organization both in certified and classified roles. I think the the work that we’re trying to get better at in this upcoming hiring season is about how do we run kind of like a parallel process that helps us both, I like to say be talent scouts for principles and talent, agents for candidates. 

So, you know, I think in a world where, competition for talent is great. Right? Like, we don’t necessarily have, in the months of March to to June, there’s not a ton of work that we’re gonna do to really change like the available universe of people who are teachers. And so our win formula really comes down to being able to convert at a high rate really quickly.

So how do we have a district level view of all available candidates, and what’s the best kind of talent matching of those folks to the right roles. And so, there’s also a process that we run internally to make sure that we’re have like a a clear view of where every candidate might be in the current process. 

And if maybe they haven’t officially applied for a position that we think they might be a stronger fit for. We’re able to connect those folks to positions and see if they’re if they’re interested in interviewing and also the the hiring manager is interested in in sitting down with that person as well.

I think I’ll name it, like, that also can be a very messy process. Like, and that’s where I think we’re trying to figure out how do we squeeze as much out of the pool that we’ve got to make sure that – We’ve got great folks applying for the district. We’re finding, the right role for them and making sure that we close-up as many of those cracks possible. So there’s a decentralized process, the building level, and then we try to run kind of a centralized process that does a little bit more like the talent matching type of work, at the district level.

JOSH TOLAN: Got it. This is awesome. You know, I certainly learned a lot about hiring at the K-12 district and specifically yours. I know we’ve known each other for, you know, a few years now. So it’s you know, great to learn more about what happens behind the scenes with you and your team, and I really appreciate it. 

I know everybody listening. Whether they’re in K-12 or private sector are gonna learn something from this specifically as it relates to the time and, you know, attention that you guys are placing on, you know, really every stage of the hiring process, but all the prep work that goes into, you know, before you hire, right, to set yourself up for success when, you know, the rubber meets the road and you gotta hit those numbers in order for the district to be staffed appropriately. So really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. This is great. 

ALEX MOSEMAN: Yeah. Thanks, Josh.