New School Staff Recruitment Services from TES and DCSF

As you are no doubt aware both the DCSF and TES are offering new school recruitment products. If they haven't already contacted you they will soon do so.
The TES service is called 'TES HireWire', www.teshirewire.com, and is already available, they are targeting high schools in the first instance. (Note you will need Internet Explorer 7 or newer, or a browser such as Mozilla Firefox to use this service.) The DCSF product is called the 'Schools Recruitment Service', www.standards.dcsf.gov.uk, and is not yet available despite due to be launched in February.

Both products claim to make recruiting school staff easier and more efficient by being on-line services that support the whole process from advertisement to appointment. They both claim to provide improved feedback on the effectiveness of your advertisements in different media.
The TES service claims to be free 'in perpetuity'.
The DCSF service claims to be free for an introductory period of six months and thereafter there will be an as yet unspecified scale of charges.

A group of local authority teacher recruitment managers including myself invited both the TES and DCSF to complete a simple table showing the key features of their schemes in order that schools could make a quick and easy comparison of the two services. The DCSF proved unwilling to do so and preferred to provide a generalised press release. The table with the TES HireWire column completed and statements from the DCSF and TES together with their most recent press releases are attached.

TES HireWire - Transforming School Recruitment
TES HireWire Brochure
DCSF Schools Recruitment Service
Statement from DCSF
Comparsion of DCSF and TSL (TES) Recruitment Services

We are not in a position to recommend to you either, both or none of the schemes. You will want to make up your own mind whether or not they may assist you.
What we would say to all those schools that buy into NCC's Teacher Recruitment Service is that if you choose to use either of these schemes ensure you still forward your adverts to them via The Recruitment Team based at County Hall or you will lose the substantial discounts on offer via this team.
To do so using TES HireWire: when selecting from the 'place your advertisement' page you will need to select 'place direct' (not place via agency) and then from the next page select 'To LA'. This will ensure your advert goes first to the LA Recruitment Team, before being forwarded to Rileys, thereby ensuring your discount. If you have problems with this process contact Katherine Chapman on 01603 222360.

When further information becomes available on the DCSF service, we will keep you updated. We are due to attend a DCSF briefing on 18 June. In the meantime we will continue to help schools recruit staff in every way we can.

Steve Hardy
Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy Manager
Norfolk County Council, Children's Services