Childcare Management: How to Hire Good Staff

How Technology in Childcare Centers Enriches Learning
One of the most important tasks of childcare management is staffing. It is a crucial aspect of your success. Now is a good time to evaluate your childcare program to ensure you have the right people to run your childcare center this school year.

Childcare Management Tips for Staffing

Your people are your most valuable asset. Here’s how to guarantee you hire the right staff from the start.

Advertise Your Job Opening

To find the right person that fits your culture and childcare best, you’ll want to interview a variety of applicants, which means you’ll need to get a great deal of applicants. While a help wanted sign in your window may slowly spread the word, getting your job posting out there more publicly will help attract a larger audience to find the most qualified applicants. Post your job on a free online job board, like Indeed or Monster. You now have a digital link to your job posting that you can share on social media and on your website to spread the word about your job opening to cast a wide net to hire the right person.

Find Applicants with Experience

This one probably seems obvious, but you don’t want your childcare facility to be the first time that your staff cares for a child. Be sure that interviewees at least have a good deal of babysitting experience, if not professional childcare experience. Ask leading questions in your application that ask about their level of experience in the classroom outside of just providing for a child’s needs. You may also want to gain a better understanding of how much the applicant knows about early childhood development. A strong understanding of developmental milestones will aid in their teaching abilities and skills at spotting developmental concerns to help you have conversations with parents.

Look for Certifications

Before you hire any staff, know the requirements in your state for certifications required by law for childcare staff. Even if your state doesn’t have strict regulations in this area, you’ll want to look for applicants who are certified in CPR and keep their certification up to date. Depending on what age group you’re applicants will be caring for, you may also want to require a college education. A formal teaching degree can help your teachers with course planning and adaptations to meet each individual child’s needs.

Attitude

Don’t rush the interview. You’ll want to spend some time with applicants to get a good feel for their attitude. Children can pick up on a caregiver’s attitude. A teacher who has no energy or enthusiasm for learning can rub off on the children they care for. As part of your interview, consider having them teach a mock class. You don’t want to do the mock class with your students as you’ll want to complete necessary background checks before letting them near your students. But invite them to walk you through a lesson to see their style.

Complete Background Checks

You students are precious, and parents entrust them to you to ensure their safety and wellbeing day in and day out. With such a huge responsibility, you’ll want to complete a background check for anyone who will spend any time around your students. There are many inexpensive resources out there to help you complete a background check, but you may want to do it locally and require a drug test to further ensure the safety of your students.

Use Childcare Management Software

Childcare software can help you estimate your staffing needs by helping you to more efficiently calculate how much time children spend at your facility in the case of part-time schedules and know about vacation coverage for your staff. If you’re looking to enhance your educating skills this school year, preschool software can make this possible. Childcare management software can also make you an attractive employer as applicants look for new ways to engage the classroom and tools to reduce paperwork and other bothersome tasks they have no interest in. iCare Software offers a comprehensive tool that empowers you and your staff to have better insights into your classroom activities and faster, more consistent interactions with parents via messaging, journal entries and photo sharing. Learn more about what iCare can do for your administration.
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