Prospect Schools Eliminates 50% of Recruiter Admin Time with VidCruiter

The Client

Prospect Schools is a K-12 school network in Brooklyn, NY, with seven campuses across the borough. It’s known for its unparalleled commitment to preparing an inclusive and diverse student body to embrace a lifelong passion for learning, including college and beyond.

This quality of education makes teacher recruitment a critical priority for the school's leadership. They want to attract the most dedicated and capable educators to nurture and develop the student body.

The Challenge

Recruiting teachers is highly competitive in New York. There are potentially 100s of schools seeking to fill 1000s of vacancies heading into each school year, and the bulk of that hiring activity occurs in a condensed three-month recruitment window (vs. year-round hiring). Given Prospect Schools’ pursuit of high-caliber educators, the organization’s leadership team identified the need to revamp its recruitment approach to be more proactive and agile.

Organizations like Prospect Schools can’t simply focus on filling open positions. School networks must anticipate future vacancies, attract new talent, and actively work to keep existing staff, particularly those with in-demand experience or qualifications.

Previously, Prospect Schools' recruitment relied on multiple manual processes and data sources, utilizing Google Drive folders, Google Docs, spreadsheets, and written phone screen notes. This approach was cumbersome, time-consuming, and limited the recruitment team’s ability to identify hiring needs and then attract and engage with the most desirable candidates.

“It can be hard to hire teachers. We need to know that our systems are as efficient and effective as possible so we’re not losing candidates along the way.”

Prospect Schools’ previous applicant tracking system (ATS) offered limited functionality beyond simply collecting applications. Leadership recognized the need for a more sophisticated system to automate administrative load and provide timely reporting to develop a more responsive and dynamic recruitment strategy. Additionally, they needed a solution seamlessly integrated with ADP’s Workforce Now to complete the hiring process, streamline onboarding, and consolidate other HR processes.

The Solution

Nabila Yusufali, Prospect Schools’ Director of Recruitment, spearheaded the technological overhaul to support the strategic vision shortly after she joined. She recognized that a standardized solution wouldn’t address the organization’s needs, so she looked for a technology partner with a versatile product and a highly capable implementation team to tailor the product to their needs. Her previous experience with VidCruiter gave her the confidence to bring the platform to Prospect Schools.

VidCruiter’s ATS effectively centralized all data, records, interview evaluations, and notes into one unified system, establishing a single source of truth. Its powerful recruitment tools modernized Prospect Schools’ data collection and management, creating a solid foundation for automating repetitive administrative tasks and real-time reporting.

Understanding Hiring Needs

It’s critical to understand specific hiring needs when working in a tight hiring window like Prospect Schools faced. A clear recruitment goal will guide the type and number of postings, where and how to promote them, and the quantity and type of resources needed to fill those openings.

Prospect Schools capitalized on VidCruiter’s platform to digitize their workforce planning process. The organization automated its retention (intent-to-return) survey to gauge current teachers’ plans to continue the next academic year. By capturing these results faster, Prospect Schools developed a comprehensive strategic plan well in advance of the recruiting season.

Building a Recruiting Framework

Another critical benefit that VidCruiter provided was recruitment process mapping. Prospect Schools was able to reorganize and streamline workflows to capture the benefits of digitalization and automation while maintaining the organization’s vision and ethos of value-driven recruitment.

In addition to applicant tracking, Prospect Schools uses VidCruiter for screening and structured interviewing, automated scheduling, automated reference checking, and even the onboarding workflow for new hires, which is directly integrated into ADP’s Workforce Now.

Engaging Candidates at Critical Points

Maintaining candidate engagement was a top priority due to the competitive hiring environment. VidCruiter’s ATS provides a comprehensive candidate communications workflow that notifies candidates at every stage and communicates details about next steps as they advance. This level of transparency is critical to keeping candidates informed and feeling valued. It increases the likelihood that job offers are accepted and leaves a positive, lasting impression on candidates who aren’t hired but may be open to future opportunities.

Curating the Pool

Another benefit of using the VidCruiter platform was taking a second look at candidates recruiters had previously identified as potential fits with the organization but had not been hired. This list was another strategic tool allowing recruiters to plan for the competitive hiring season.

The Result

Identifying a Clear Target

Prospect Schools gained better and faster clarity about which and what type of teachers planned to stay or move on using VidCruiter for its intent-to-return survey.

This workforce planning process, once a dreaded administrative burden, was organized and prepared 75% faster using VidCruiter than the previous year. This process also eliminated an additional month plus of manual tracking and follow-up. Using automated SMS and email reminders, Prospect Schools achieved a 100% completion rate ahead of schedule for the first time in memory.

The insights gained enabled the recruiting team to plan a more detailed and accurate recruiting strategy, knowing exactly which roles, skills, and experience it needed to complete next season's roster.

Gaining Efficiencies, Reducing Costs

Beyond the clarity VidCruiter’s workforce planning tools provided, Yusufali says the most immediate benefits were how automation features significantly reduced the manual processes: scheduling interviews, conducting reference checks, and managing candidate follow-ups. This improved the experience for both recruiters and candidates.

“Being able to be more proactive with the prospect list and invite them to hiring events has been huge. We’ve been able to make a lot of candidate hires through this list.”

The recruiting team quickly took to the platform’s intuitive design and ability to simplify complex workflows. For example, Prospect Schools refined its group interview scenario, where multiple hiring managers evaluate multiple educators simultaneously. Before VidCruiter, this was a monumental task. Now, recruiters simply send out a scheduling link, and the system coordinates with the candidates and the hiring managers – even distributing the proper individual materials to all parties.

“VidCruiter handles all of the complexity, which is really exciting. We don’t spend time reinventing the wheel with each candidate. We focus our time on improving the overall experience and getting better results.”

Increasing Trust and Transparency

The adoption rate was high amongst Prospect Schools’ team of nearly 50 hiring managers as they moved from primarily manual processes to VidCruiter’s fully digital, automated process. Yusufali attributes the successful transition to the quality of the educational and training materials provided, demonstrating how hiring managers could eliminate repetitive administrative tasks, often the least favorable part of the process.

While it’s difficult to gauge changes in the quality of hire during the first year, Prospect Schools has seen a noticeable improvement in the team’s ability to identify, track, and manage high-potential candidates through the recruitment funnel. The anxiety around potentially losing great candidates to competitors has been greatly reduced.

“Before, it was just like an abyss of resumes coming through, and I couldn't easily track what was happening with individual candidates. With VidCruiter, we now can vigilantly track top candidates and keep them moving through our process.”