One of the many issues that affect high rates of employee turnover in general can make a major impact on your child care center in a variety of ways. Finding staff members that are a right fit for your child care center will combine with other practices to help ensure that they desire to stay long term in addition to making your child care center an overall successful one.
Finding the Right Match
The employee selection process can certainly be daunting, but it starts with attracting the candidates that would actually be a good fit for the position. In order to do that, you’ll need to clearly define the role as well as required skills and experience. When you don’t end up having to weed out dozens of applicants who aren’t qualified for the childcare position, you’ll be thankful you were clear from the start. Once you end up with resumes for only those who claim to be qualified, the next step is to clarify whether the person actually has those skills.
You can ask questions about both the candidate’s specific experience and their thoughts on how to handle typical or decidedly difficult situations that have come up in your child care center. You may also ask a candidate to role play with you, demonstrating how they would teach a certain skill.
Noticing Quality Candidates
Finding staff members who will be positive additions to your child care center isn’t something you can determine based on a resume alone; much of an employee’s value is comprised of “soft skills” as well as character qualities and overall attitude. Once you’ve met with a potential candidate, do you find yourself thinking you could schedule the person so that you wouldn’t have to work directly with them, or would you want to coordinate so that you could be around that person more? If the answer is the former, then that person would probably not be a positive choice for your child care center. A person you wouldn’t want to spend time with probably won’t be attractive to students or their parents, either.
Asking Good Questions
When interviewing a candidate, be sure to use open-ended questions, rather than those answered by a simple “yes” or “no.” As the candidate talks, some of your questions may be answered before you even ask them. To determine the suitability of a quality candidate for your particular child care center, you’ll want to discover the kind of atmosphere the candidate prefers and professional goals the candidate has as well as their ability to work as part of a team and follow your management style. Remember, a good follow-up question to any open-ended questions is, “Why?” or “What make you think that’s the case?”
As you secure quality staff members that are well suited to your child care center, you’ll build a successful and positive environment. As you grow, you’ll find Jackrabbit Care to be even more helpful than it is right now.
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JackrabbitCare
Jackrabbit Care software provides childcare centers and daycare businesses with smart online solutions for billing, sign ups, registration & business management. Jackrabbit’s leading online child care management software delivers an unparalleled combination of speed, reliability and smart customer-focused solutions. Learn more at www.JackrabbitCare.com or call them at (704) 895-4034.
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