VIDEO: Teacher Job Fair

OXFORD, Miss. (WCBI) – In Oxford, a teacher job fair was held at Oxford High School.

Teachers meet with principals and administrators from the Oxford School District, adding a more personal touch to the job application process.

You can almost compare it to speed dating, where teachers meet with administrators for a short period of time.

This method is fairly new, only being around for the last six years, but it is already proving to be better than previous methods.

Teachers came from across the state to try this new type of applying for a job.

“It’s an opportunity for us to show off this school, our district, and our community,” said Oxford School District Superintendent Brian Harvey.

For an entire morning, principals and administrators met face-to-face with potential employees, something that’s hard to do during a normal work day.

“What we’ve found, and the reason we went to this, is many people, potential job applicants would show up at the schools, and they’d want a face-to-face with the principal or the administration and sometimes that just doesn’t work. It puts us ahead of the game in trying to recruit the best and get the best teachers here,” said Harvey.

On the personal level, this is a better method of meeting applicants.

Before, most applications would be online, through websites or emails.

“You’re looking over that, and you’re trying to get to know who someone is by just looking at a piece of paper or looking at a computer screen. That’s very very difficult,” said Oxford Intermediate School Principal Steve Hurdle.

This also provides a go-to bank of applicants when a position opens up within the school district.

Through this, employers know whether or not they would make a good fit to their staff.

“The job fair is absolutely a benefit. There’s no telling the number of applicants that we have hired after having met them here at this job fair. I feel confident that there will be some people that I’ve talked to today that will get full interview with me in the future,” said Hurdle.

Administrators say that this type of fair has also spread to their neighboring school district, Lafayette County, and it’s only a matter of time before this spreads across the state.

Categories: Local News

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