Free is a nice price

My son, a Millennial, has changed jobs several times since he left university 4 years ago and embarked on a graduate scheme with Lloyds.  It seems that as soon as he has mastered one aspect of the job he wants to either move up or move sideways to learn new things.  He's not the only one of his generation doing this - apparently Millennials change jobs around once every 2.5 years during the first 10 years of work.

I'm interested in the recruitment, retention and development of teachers, having studied this on R&D for the past 2 years and been involved in the initial prototypes of the Global Recruitment Collaborative.  One thing is sure - salary is not a big factor in determining whether employees decide to stay or leave.  In fact a recent article on LinkedIn points to the fact that people leave jobs because they want new challenges and responsibilities - in a nutshell they want to develop themselves further.

I've started to think about how often teachers are given opportunities for learning something new within the schools where they are working.  In my case, my first international school encouraged me to develop in many directions - from starting as a high school teacher, to moving down into elementary, and finally to taking a role in the tech department.  Most of the schools where I've worked have given me opportunities to get involved in new things, and reflecting on this I would say I've been blessed, because many teachers who are hired as, for example, a high school geography teachers end up teaching that subject for the entire time they work at the school.

I was recently reading about the Google "bungee program" - which allows employees a chance to try out new positions within the company rather than forcing them to look outside for new opportunities. Bungee program employees take part in a temporary job placement to develop new skills.  A similar initiative,  started by Hootsuite, is called the "stretch program" and allows top performing employees the opportunity to work one day per week in a new team for a period of 3 months, after which, if everything is working out, the decision could be made to jump full-time into a new role.  Even if the employee decides to stay in his or her current role,  there is still a lot of benefit to knowing more about another area of the business.  Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, writes "Giving employees a chance to truly grow - without having to pull up stakes and leave the company - is a common-sense tactic to attract and keep great talent."

I'm thinking about this - and how it could possibly apply to schools.

However for those teachers who have decided to move on, maybe the Global Recruitment Collaborative fair in Dubai might be interesting.  It's the world's first free face-to-face job fair for international educators and it's taking place from November 12th - 14th - so quite a bit earlier than the other recruitment fairs.  Currently there are about 90 international schools across the globe recruiting through the GRC, with about half of them coming to Dubai to interview candidates.  It's possible to come to this job fair, even if you don't currently work in a GRC school.  And since free is a very nice price - if you are thinking of changing job this year, what do you have to lose.

For more information about the GRC click here.