Building a Diversified Candidate Sourcing Strategy

We are now looking for an experienced recruitment, growth, partnership, or talent acquisition specialist to help shape the next phase of our candidate attraction strategy.

The Opportunity Now Teach has recruited more than 1,500 experienced professionals into teaching, helping talented career changers bring their skills and expertise into classrooms across the country. We are now looking for an experienced recruitment, growth, partnership, or talent acquisition specialist to help shape the next phase of our candidate attraction strategy. We believe there is significant untapped potential in developing partnership-led recruitment channels and engaging directly with professional networks and employers. This is an opportunity to help Now Teach unlock new pools of career-change talent through strategic partnerships, professional networks and innovative attraction approaches that connect more people with our mission. Working closely with the Now Teach team, you will help develop a more sustainable and scalable candidate acquisition model, reducing reliance on paid channels whilst maintaining or improving lead quality, application volume, and conversion performance.

Why this matters. This September, 250 new Now Teachers will start their Initial Teacher Training. Unusually for the profession, 60 percent are training in STEM subjects. They come from backgrounds as varied as banking, law, technology, business, and medicine; they bring years of unique experience into the classroom. Our teachers also remain in the classroom for longer: 80 percent of Now Teachers are still teaching after two years, compared with just 59 percent of a comparable cohort. Critically, they would not be here without us: 61 percent of Now Teachers say they would not have become teachers—or would have left the profession—without our support.

The Challenge. Currently, most Mathematics career changer leads are generated through paid or social media channels and PR. While this approach has delivered results, it creates several strategic risks, including increasing acquisition costs, reduced resilience to fluctuations in campaign performance, and a dependency on a limited number of lead-generation channels. This work represents an opportunity to develop a more resilient, cost-effective and scalable recruitment strategy that broadens our reach while maintaining or improving lead quality and conversion outcomes.

Project Objective. Develop a prioritised partnership-building and candidate sourcing strategy focused on recruiting career change candidates to train to teach, particularly in Mathematics, that reduces reliance on paid media whilst maintaining or improving: Lead quality Application volume Conversion performance The strategy should identify and evaluate alternative candidate acquisition channels and provide clear recommendations on where Now Teach should focus its future investment and partnership activity.

Capability Requirements To support this work, we are looking for an individual with expertise in ITT recruitment, career changer engagement, network/community engagement and/or experienced hire recruitment. We are seeking: Experience of designing and implementing candidate sourcing strategies. Knowledge of recruitment and attraction approaches aimed at career changers and experienced professionals. An understanding of the education sector and teacher training recruitment landscape. Experience of building partnerships with employers, universities, professional bodies or membership organisations. Experience of translating research into practical recommendations. A collaborative approach, working closely with the Now Teach team to shape recommendations and support implementation.

Scope of Work. We are looking for support for approximately two days per week, commencing in late July / early August 2026, with the aim of developing recommendations and implementation plans for a proposed launch date of 1 October 2026. The appointed individual would be responsible for: Identifying alternative candidate acquisition sources, scoping potential audience size and assessing which are most likely to deliver high-quality career changers committed to our mission. Initiate outreach to assess viability of priority sources, reporting on how and what engagement with our target audience may look like, gathering costs and resource implications. Provide recommendations as to which sources offer the best return on investment, considering volume of candidate, geography, short- and long-term benefit and scalability potential. Develop a phased experimentation roadmap that enables Now Teach to validate new sourcing approaches before wider implementation.

Budget envelope. We have £5000 available for project delivery, in anticipation of 12 days work at £400 per day.

Timeline. 13th July: Expressions of interest submitted – please provide a CV along with a paragraph on your fit for the project and a summary document of how you would approach the work and costings (2 sides A4 or short slide deck). Please submit to: [email removed - click apply for more details] 22nd July: Shortlisted applicants to meet virtually with Now Teach Team for follow up discussions. 24th July: Decision

Our long-term vision is a world where children benefit because talented people, who’ve already had successful careers, become teachers, and bring their skills and experiences to the schools that need them most.