Posting a childcare job to the usual board and getting two unqualified applicants is a normal experience right now. It’s also a sign that your hiring is set up to compete with every other center’s hiring — same board, same template, same wait.
The centers we see hiring successfully are doing two things differently. They’re sourcing where their competitors aren’t, and they’re moving fast when a real candidate appears.
On sourcing: think about where qualified people you’d actually hire are already spending time. Community college ECE programs. ROP early-childhood programs at local high schools. Family resource centers. Church bulletin boards. Spanish-language community groups. Adult-ed certificate programs. These are not flashy channels. They’re full of exactly the people you want.
Why the Old Playbook Is Broken
Pick two channels and commit to them for 90 days. One coffee with a community college coordinator is worth ten Indeed posts. One handwritten note dropped at a family resource center is worth a hundred Facebook ads. The signal you send by showing up in person changes who applies.
On moving fast: when a real candidate emails you, respond within four hours. Not the next day. Not ‘when I have a minute.’ Four hours. The person who can teach in your toddler room is interviewing somewhere else this week. The owner who answers her email first usually wins.
What Actually Helps
Once you’ve responded, make the next step ridiculously easy. A 20-minute phone call this week. A short classroom visit next week. A trial day after that. Skip the 12-page packet. You can do paperwork after you know you have a yes.
And don’t sell a job you can’t deliver. Honest centers — the ones that say ‘this role is hard, this is what’s good about it, this is the team you’d join, here’s what we pay’ — get the right yes more often than centers that oversell. The wrong yes turns into a quit in three months. The right yes turns into a five-year teacher.
Hiring in a tight market is not about being louder. It’s about being where the real candidates are, and being faster than the place down the street. Both of those are within your control.
Why This Matters
The staffing pressure is not imaginary. California early childhood workforce data from CSCCE shows how low wages continue to shape the early education workforce, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics childcare worker outlook helps explain why pay, schedule, and retention have to be part of any hiring conversation.
Final Thoughts
Hiring gets easier when a center becomes the kind of workplace early educators can actually see themselves staying in.