Using ChatGPT to Find and Hire Teachers: A Guide for K-12 Schools

When it comes to recruiting and hiring top educators, there is a long list of obstacles that every school faces. At the top are the most obvious: the need for high-quality job descriptions and strategies for reaching prospective educators. Less obvious, however, is the time and energy required to overcome these articles.

Luckily, the process of creating talent acquisition collateral, like vacancies and emails, can be expedited with the help of artificially intelligent language generators like ChatGPT. 

In this article, we’ll explore how schools can use ChatGPT to streamline their recruiting and hiring efforts, and provide examples of the content it can create.

Content:

• What is ChatGPT?
• The Benefits of ChatGPT for Schools
• 7 Ways Schools Can Use ChatGPT to Improve Teacher Recruitment
• Considerations and Limitations
• Moving Forward

What is ChatGPT?

In a sentence, ChatGPT is a natural language generator powered by artificial intelligence (AI), designed to create written content from user-provided prompts. Put far more simply, ChatGPT is a tool that can write like a human — enabling users to expedite projects by simply teaching and prompting it.

In practice, the AI tool operates a lot like text messaging a friend, but instead of making dinner plans it generates content that you ask for. By providing the tool with more information and prompting it with more specific commands, it will in turn produce more personalized content.

Overall, ChatGPT offers a way for schools to expedite their content creation processes across the board, including for the purpose of hiring and recruiting top teachers.

The Benefits of ChatGPT for Schools

Between addressing the mundanity of writing job descriptions to optimizing engagement and reach, ChatGPT offers a myriad of benefits for schools when it comes to talent acquisition. At the top of that list are the following:

• Greater Efficiency: With ChatGPT, schools can write vacancies, emails, social posts, and more within seconds, enabling admins to prioritize other responsibilities.
• Improved Quality: Between its previous training and user-provided information, ChatGPT can generate high-quality content that meets the expectations of today’s top educators.
• Candidate Engagement: Using the information provided by admins, ChatGPT can generate engaging and personalized communications that can help attract top talent and build more positive relationships with prospects

Through just these three benefits, it is obvious that ChatGPT provides schools with the ability to quickly produce high quality, engaging collateral designed to attract top prospective teachers.

7 Ways Schools Can Use ChatGPT  to Improve Teacher Recruitment

When it comes to generating written content, there is hardly anything that ChatGPT cannot do with the right training, information, and prompts. 

In this section we will overview seven different pieces of content that schools can use ChatGPT to produce to improve their talent acquisition efforts. With each piece of content, we will share an example of a ChatGPT output, as well as our initial input.

1. Vacancy Postings

Without question, a well written vacancy posting is essential for finding and hiring top talent.

Naturally, schools can use ChatGPT to write clear and compelling job descriptions that accurately reflect the responsibilities and qualifications of the role they’re looking to fill. The process is quite simple: simply “train” ChatGPT by providing examples of similar job descriptions, the details of the vacancy that needs to be filled, and then ask ChatGPT to generate a new posting.

Within seconds, ChatGPT will provide a job description using the information it was given. What happens if it’s not what you’re looking for? Simply prompt ChatGPT to make the changes you want — or simply edit it yourself!

Below is an example of a job description written by ChatGPT, which required a sample vacancy posting, the position details, and the school’s relevant information (mission, philosophy, etc.).

Example of a ChatGPT-Generated Vacancy Posting

2. Promotional Emails

As you have probably experienced, a well-written vacancy is only effective if it finds the right audience! Like any other industry, schools can (and should) use email to inform potential prospects of their openings.

As expected, ChatGPT can be used to produce emails for promoting vacancies. To do so, admins need to simply provide information about the position, prompt it to write an email, and then use subsequent prompts to finetune the message.

As a pro-tip, we recommend providing the AI tool with not just your written job description, but previous promotional emails your school has written so ChatGPT can mirror your tone, cadence, and word choice.

Below is an example of a promotional email written by ChatGPT, using our job description from above.

Example of a ChatGPT Generated Promotional Emails

3. Social Media Posts

As we covered in a previous blog, social media can also be a great tool for schools to promote their open vacancies!

Luckily, with ChatGPT, you can craft memorable and shareable posts in just seconds. Along with providing details about the vacancy, you can also ask the AI tool to craft your message to a specific social media outlet — ensuring your post maximizes its engagement potential. 

For example, if you instruct ChatGPT to write for Facebook, your post will have a more casual and inviting tone that’s consistent with its users’ expectation; alternatively, a post for LinkedIn may be a bit more dry and informative. 

Beyond just tone, ChatGPT can also create effective calls to action (CTAs) to invite people to engage with your job description. Because your school’s goal is to funnel social media users to your vacancy’s application, it is vital to ensure it is a part of your post.

Below are three social media posts written by ChatGPT using our job description from above.

Example of a ChatGPT Generated Social Media Post

4. Social Media Hashtags

On social media, “hashtags” are used to group similar messages together to help their target audience find them. Used by nearly every outlet, they are a vital part of growing a social media post’s visibility.

To further boost your vacancy’s reach on social media platforms, we recommend adding hashtags to your social media posts as well. 

Not a digital marketer? Don’t worry! ChatGPT can easily craft them for you. Simply prompt it to create hashtags that are relevant to your audience (for example, K-12 teachers) and let it do the rest.

Below are ten hashtags written by ChatGPT.

Example of a ChatGPT Generated Social Media Hashtags

5. Rejection Emails

Of course, there are more steps to the talent acquisition process than just getting teachers to apply. While no one enjoys receiving a rejection email, they are a necessary part of finding and hiring educators.

Thankfully, ChatGPT can write those as well.

Like other content, the tone of a rejection email will be influenced by the information and prompt you provide ChatGPT. Naturally, we recommend providing information about the vacancy, as well as a sample of a previous rejection letter. You can even include the recipient's name and notes from their interview.

Below is an example of a rejection email generated by ChatGPT, written in a professional tone.

Example of a ChatGPT Generated Rejection Email 

6. Acceptance Emails

Thankfully, not all emails have to be rejection emails!

While sharing good news is always exciting, it still takes time to write an acceptance email. As you could expect, ChatGPT can handle that for you too!

Similar to the rejection email, all ChatGPT needs is information about the applicant, their interview, and the next steps of the hiring process. Like other materials, you can even offer previous emails to make sure it matches the warm and inviting tone you’d like to convey!

Below is an example of an acceptance email generated by ChatGPT, written in a professional tone.

Example of a ChatGPT-Generated Acceptance Email 

7. Additional Promotional Materials

Of course, social media posts and emails are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to promoting a vacancy. Depending on your school’s audience and resources, you may want to create graphics, ad copy, and more to increase the visibility of your opening.

While ChatGPT cannot do every part of the marketing process, it can certainly put together one-liners and elevator pitches that your school can use in whatever medium you want.

Below are five examples of short-form promotional copy, generated by ChatGPT.

Example of a ChatGPT Generated Promotional Copy

Considerations & Limitations

While an incredible tool, ChatGPT is still flawed and limited in certain areas — largely due to the nature of natural language generators. As a result, it’s important to keep in mind that, while convenient, your school cannot rely on the AI tool to completely automate tasks for talent acquisition.

In this section, we highlight some key considerations and limitations with respect to ChatGPT’s capabilities.

Formatting of Content

If you have tried using ChatGPT, you may have noticed that it is far closer to a chatbox than a Word document. As such, it is not designed to properly format content, especially outside of its interface.

For schools, this means that there will still be some manual work that cannot be avoided — job descriptions will still have to be formatted to fit templates, emails may need to have bullet points added, etc.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend framing ChatGPT as a writing assistant, not an end-all-be-all content creator. Of course, there are still alternatives that can streamline the formatting of vacancies and other materials, including Searchality.

Accuracy of Information

Although it is certainly knowledgeable, ChatGPT is no more trustworthy than a regular person on the street. While it was trained with millions of materials, it is, at the end of the day, a language processor — it simply orders words to form sentences, using the patterns it learned from other materials.

As a result, your school should make sure to double-check all information before distributing a piece of content. Whether it's asked to talk about your school or Civil War history, there is always a risk that the AI tool may write convincing, but still fabricated facts.

Reading the web

Importantly, ChatGPT 3.5 is not designed to read content. Currently, it cannot be instructed to browse the web and pull information.

Instead, the AI tool can only learn by having users input information through the program’s interface. Perhaps one day it will be able to work more autonomously, but for now get ready to press copy and paste!

Generating lists of people

Similarly, ChatGPT cannot access real-time data, meaning it cannot currently create lists of prospective teachers to share your vacancies with.

Instead, we recommend using online platforms to network with other educators, as well as to share your openings directly. Along with LinkedIn, Facebook groups, and job boards, recruitment platforms like Searchality offer tools to easily connect with ideal candidates.

Moving Forward

Overall, ChatGPT offers ample opportunities for schools to streamline the recruitment process, attract qualified candidates, and open up time for more admins to spend on other tasks. From writing job descriptions to crafting promotional materials, the tool can be used to efficiently create the materials necessary for filling vacancies with quality educators.

Still, its limitations mean that schools need more than just an AI writer to enhance their recruitment efforts.

Designed specifically for K-12 education, Searchality provides schools with the tools necessary for finding and hiring their ideal teaching candidates in the digital age. In addition to standard recruitment tools, our platform helps schools streamline their talent search by automating typical recruitment tasks, such as creating vacancy postings, filtering qualified candidates, and notifying both successful and unsuccessful applicants. Even better, Searchality’s transparent, flat-rate pricing ensures all schools are able to attract the best candidates possible — regardless of financial barriers.

Ready to find out how Searchality can transform your talent search? To get in touch with our team, click here.. We look forward to meeting you!