Record turnout at annual UD teacher job fair

Charity Phillips, director of curriculum and assignment from Delmar School District, discusses teaching opportunities with Jessica Funovits, a senior in family consumer science education.

5:03 p.m., March 24, 2005--Hundreds of candidates for teaching jobs met face-to-face with recruiters from more than 120 school districts from across the country during a two-day Teacher Job Fair on Monday and Tuesday, March 21-22, at UD’s Bob Carpenter Sports/Convocation Center.

Dozens of the candidates from UD, Delaware State University (DSU) and several other regional colleges were immediately offered jobs, and many more were invited to additional interviews for jobs in a variety of states, including Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, California, Georgia and Washington state.

Of the 1,168 candidates who attended the fair, 680 were UD students and alumni, Cindy Holland, assistant director of UD’s MBNA Career Services Center, which organized the fair, said.

Shanita Leanier from DSU was offered a job just 15 minutes into her first interview of the day with David Francoeur, director of employment services, Dekalb County School System, Georgia.

“It was a great experience,” Leanier, who is set to graduate May 15, said. “I met the gentleman at 9:30 a.m., the interview started at 9:45 a.m. and at 10 a.m. I was hired. It felt great! I had a whole bath of tears.”

Francoeur, whose school district pays the highest salaries in Georgia, said the UD job fair provides an excellent pool of potential employees from Delaware and Pennsylvania, both of which have reciprocal agreements with Georgia to honor the state’s teacher certification.

“We’ve made it here seven years in a row, and we’ve gotten teachers every time we come up,” Francoeur said. “In the state of Georgia, the [colleges] are producing about 20 percent of the teachers needed for the state. If you do the math, you will understand why we are here.”

Holland said a rising nationwide demand for teachers due to retirement and fewer students choosing education as their major have enhanced the importance of the annual recruitment event.

“This is the biggest ever,” Holland said. “We have more recruiters from more districts and more states. There are 325 recruiters, and 200 are from out of state. We have the reputation of being among the best because we have good students and the format of our day makes it very easy to interact with the recruiters.”

Jessica Funovits, a UD senior in family consumer science education, said she had just finished an interview with a recruiter from Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland when another recruiter from Charles County School District, also in Maryland, “grabbed me, and asked me if I wanted to interview with them.”

Funovits, who also was interviewed by the Charles County recruiter, said the fair was a convenient way to meet dozens of recruiters and receive immediate feedback. “It’s a good way to kill several birds with one stone.”

Halfway through the second day of the fair, Carolyn Strum, director of human resources in Christina School District, said her team of eight recruiters had interviewed 120 candidates and offered 20 job contracts. The greatest demand is for teachers of mathematics, physics, chemistry, English as a second language, special education and speech and language, she said.

“The reason we love this job fair is because it brings a lot of students from a variety of colleges, and it is a very professionally organized fair,” Strum said as she ushered in one of a dozen candidates waiting in line for interviews at the Christina School District section. “If they don’t come here, I work the floor to get them.”

Pamela McKnight, coordinator of recruitment for the Fairfax School District in Virginia, the 12th largest public school system in the country with 166,00 students, said the fair was an important first encounter with some of the 1,300 teachers her district expects to hire for fall 2005 positions.

“Most of the openings are for special education, math, chemistry and physics,” McKnight said. “We’d like to see more candidates in that area. We are looking for the best of the best. We will not offer contracts today, but we will be offering early hire contracts in two to three days.”

Besides easy accessibility to recruiters, the fair also helps recruiters immediately evaluate candidates, Francoeur said. The most important qualities are how the candidates answer questions, if they come prepared, if they have resumes, how they are dressed and how they carry themselves, he said.

Leanier, who, as senior class president led a campaign to spread word about the fair at DSU, offered advice for future candidates: “Come prepared. You can never be too prepared. Make sure you bring your resume, dress professionally and be confident.”

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson

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