Own a Daycare Blog » Hiring http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:00:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Day Care Staff Hiring 101 http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/day-care-staff-hiring-101 http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/day-care-staff-hiring-101#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:37:57 +0000 Mary http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/?p=787 Related posts:]]> It’s is time to hire new staff for your day care and you might be getting confused from all of those that might be submitting resumes. As the owner, even if you had 34 applicants, you have no choice but to interview them all. How are you exactly going to pinpoint which are the people who should land a job in your day care? This might seem to be really hard to do, but if you really understand how a day care should be run, you would know what to look for. Here are some of the things that you should check should anyone apply for a job in your day care.

Language Use
Children are such innocent people that those who choose to work in a day care should always be mindful of the language that they use. They should be able to teach the children the right language as well as the right way of constructing sentences and phrases since this is the age where they get to learn how to really talk straight. The staff should always keep this in mind and never use slang or even cursing. As well as the language use, you should always be able to gauge if the person is using child-friendly language that they children can understand.

Tattoos and Piercings
Time has permitted people to accept that there is nothing really wrong with these things. This is a form of expression that we should not care so much about. Unless this would involve your day care, you might want to care about this. Parents are really particular with the neatness as well as the clean appearance of the people who will take care of their children. This is up to you if you are willing to risk this when you accept your applicants. Just make sure that you are going to make sure that parents will not complain for accepting these people.

Practicality
Anyone can be a staff of a day care. Honestly, this is one of the things that people can do in their everyday. Although this may seem to be case, not everyone can be a good day care staff. It is very easy to get a long and know how to watch children everyday but what happens when the staff is faced with an emergency or a situation that need to be addressed right away? You should be able to gauge the ability of your staff that they are going to be ready should there are any situations that calls for instant solutions. You might want to test for their practicality in such situations.

Looking for a day care staff might not be that complicated to do. All you have to do is to remember the things which you have to look for in a staff member. Sometimes you might want to add or lessen you qualifications. As long as you will be sure that you are going to give the best care for the children, then there is no problem about it.

See: How to start a daycare center

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]]> http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/day-care-staff-hiring-101/feed 0 Hiring And Retention Strategies For Daycare Managers http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/hiring-and-retention-strategies-for-daycare-managers http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/hiring-and-retention-strategies-for-daycare-managers#comments Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:36:13 +0000 Mary http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/?p=232 Related posts:]]> Literally thousands of Day care center directors rely on their gut instinct when making critical hiring decision. They say it’s actually an effective hiring and retention strategy, however, despite that many of them thinks they’ve made a great job out of it, evidence shows the contrary.

Many of these directors who relied heavily on their intuition to hire new staff can’t fully understand why they are always having trouble with high turnover and hard-to-manage staff. Even more are surprised and confused as to why the person they loved during the interview last week wasn’t the same person who started working the following week.

Yes there are really people who have a rare gift for sizing up a person, but really there are only very few of them, and maybe you are not one of them. If you doubt this, then just think of the last 10 people you’ve hired. How many of them had great resume? How many of them knew exactly how to answer in the interview? Or how many had great referrals? And how many did you just think was the answer to your prayers?

And now ask yourself these…

How many of those you hired lasted longer than 3 months? How many have wreaked havoc in your day care center? And more importantly, how many times did your intuition proved accurate? If you are just anyone like us, then your gut would probably prove you right only half the time. You might have just flipped the coin on this and the future of your day care.

Experts suggest that the cost of turning over a childcare worker is about $4000 to $6000 when you add up all of those replacement costs.

Just think about it, when you don’t consider playing on nickel slots with a $6000, why consider it when making hiring decision? This just make the childcare industry comparable to Las Vegas gambles on s Saturday night.

And similar to gambles, day care directors only tend to remember the times they win and blocks out the times they lost. Both are convinced they won because of their insight and equally convinced that they will surely win again despite the odds.

In general, child care owners and directors are some of the nicest people you’ll know – warm, trusting and they really care about the welfare of children. However, these same characteristics are not so helpful when making hiring decisions.

You have to keep in mind that the main criteria for hiring successful childcare employee is not about how “nice” the person seemed, or whether they’d be a good friend. You have to realize that being nice doesn’t mean that they’d be a good fit in the classroom and that friends tend not to make great employees. And it’s not even whether they have great credentials, some people with Master’s degrees refuses to help with mundane problems like bathroom leaks and others.

A good candidate needs to be behaviorally fit for the real world challenges of the job. There are actually a lot of proven behavioral tools such as pre-employment assessments and structured interviews that takes much of the guesswork out of the hiring process. These things all save time, frustrations and money.

The best tools should be specific to the position. You have to make sure that they are based on in-depth behavioral analysis along with people who really do the job. The assessment should also communicate the important job requirements for them to understand what is expected of them.

In today’s busy world, it is important to make sure that the results are returned in a timely manner to make sure that the best candidate haven’t accepted the competitor’s offer from across the street. Many behavioral assessments are available online so directors can review results even before an interview is scheduled.

And last, directors should make sure that the company they picked out has a proven track record. Ask for documents on the results achieved by clients who used their tool.

Consistent use of scientific behavior assessments proved over 90% accurate for hiring successful employees.

Attract the Right Candidate for you day care centre

After deciding on the tools to use for hiring your dream employee and preparing for their qualifications and remuneration package, are you ready to attract the right candidates for your day care?

How do you intend to hire your dream employee? It would be pointless to have the right job ready along with the right package if the candidate has no idea about it.

You can use 2 methods to spread the word on your open job positions – internally or externally.

Internal resources will naturally save you time and money on advertising the position.

* You may consider promoting staff from within the center like an assistant teacher replacing the position of the leaving teacher. This could always be the best option as you should also give your staff a chance to grow and develop before searching for an external candidate. This will also motivate and boost the morale of the staff as it shows your appreciation on their hard work.

* If you have several branch, you can consider transferring staff from one branch.

* You may also consider re-hiring other staff how had left before – they are already familiar with your system and you know the staff’s capability and character.

* If you have previously advertised for the post, review previous resumes and reassess if you can find a suitable candidate from the pool. Maybe you can speak to the second best candidate.

Only when you’ve exhausted your internal sources should you consider external methods of hiring.

* You may consider joining job fairs if you are looking to hire a huge number of staff.

* You may take up an advertisement in publications – classified page in your local papers or trade publications such as child care magazines.

* You can also use electronic advertising measures such as online job portals and child care provider’s forum and pages.

* Let you family and friends recommend potential candidates or post an open hiring in your day care’s notice board.

There are other methods of hiring but you have to keep in mind that this activity needs not to be an expensive on. Opt for cheaper alternatives but if you are in a real hurry, getting help form employment agencies and advertisement are the quickest.

See: How to start a daycare center

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]]> http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/hiring-and-retention-strategies-for-daycare-managers/feed 0 Hiring Child Care Providers http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/hiring-child-care-providers http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/hiring-child-care-providers#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:10:27 +0000 Mary http://www.ownadaycare.com/blog/?p=129 Related posts:]]> Once your daycare center starts its operations and you have shown to the initial clients that you really meant business, more and more clients will be coming in. Before you knew it, the number of clients you have is way too much to handle by yourself – you need help. You will have to hire additional child care providers to enable you to provide the same quality care to your clients.

Hiring personnel is easy but getting the right person for the job is a difficult matter. You must hire a person who will be able to care for the children in your center in the same manner that you do. The following are some guidelines when hiring a child care provider:

1. Experience is important but it should not be the only factor to consider in hiring. Character references provided by relatives or friends whom the applicant has babysat for will give you a good idea if the applicant can handle the job he is applying for. An applicant can have many years of experience but if he cannot provide any good character reference, you still cannot be sure if he is the right person you are looking for.

2. Ask if the applicant is willing to commit to the job for a long time. He might be interested only in getting some experience in your daycare center and leave afterwards. A daycare service should provide love, consistency, and reassurance that the children are in a safe environment. Constant changes of personnel will create the opposite impression. Parents will not feel secured every time they see a new care provider for their children. Children also will not feel comfortable in the presence of a new person caring for them.

3. Provide a detailed job description to the person you are going to hire. Before he starts working, you have to make clear with him what his duties and responsibilities will be. This could prevent any misunderstanding that might arise if the new hire is not really sure of what he is supposed to do. You have to be patient in explaining and repeating to your new employee everything that he has to learn and understand. You cannot relax until you are sure that he has the feel of his job.

4. Have a probation period, from 30 to 60 days, for the new hire to find out if he is really cut for that position. This is the period to observe your new employee to see whether he really has genuine interest and love of children. His patience with children will also be tested during this probation period. If the new hire is not performing well or is unable to relate to the children he is caring for, the best and only option is to terminate his services. Do not be afraid to do it as you are protecting the interest of your business as well as the interest of the children under your care.

Hiring the right persons to help you run your daycare center will guarantee the continuous success of your business.

See: How to start a daycare center

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