After launching CandidateGo eighteen months ago, testing it, refining it, and constantly getting feedback from our edu recruitment agency customers - it was time to expand our offering.

One thing we kept getting asked for was a Behaviour Management course, and after doing some research it was obvious why. The press is awash with articles on how behaviour management is a real problem in the classroom - one COVID has only heightened. Added to the mix, is that supply teachers are at a disadvantage when they enter the classroom. They can be unfamiliar with the particular school culture, don’t know the children, and from the research we did, in some cases can be left to ‘go it alone’ with very little support from the school.

So as well as commissioning a Behaviour Management course, we thought why not try something different too. With access to teaching and education recruitment experts, why not run a webinar to discuss behaviour management, and share expertise with the very people who are going into the classroom - the supply staff.

The first bit was easy. We sourced two professionals to be our webinar guests. One is an experienced teacher who has held a SLT role and worked supply, the other a Learning & Development manager from one of the largest educational recruitment agencies in the market, who happens to be one of our lovely customers.

The next decision was what tech to use as our webinar platform. As a company, we use Zoom Workplace for our internal and client meets which we are really confident with as we all work from home and have done for the past decade.

To be honest, we expected we might get a handful of supply staff sign up for our first webinar, after all these things take time to build, right? So looking at what Zoom offered, we could use our existing business package that accommodates up to 300 people. Problem solved - or so we thought.

We set up the event, put together an agenda, talked it through with our experts. Once that was done we gave out the sign-up link to our agency clients who promoted it to their candidates.

The first surprise was the sheer volume of take up. Nearly a thousand people signed up to attend. That meant that our webinar package wouldn’t cope - even if only fifty percent turned up on the day. A simple upgrade on Zoom and we had it covered.

So the big day arrived, and the team assembled online. Ian from CandidateGo was our designated host - I would have loved to host but apparently, I talk too much!! Caroline our content guru was in charge of fielding questions, Kristi was in charge of the live streaming on LinkedIn, and I had the simple task of letting everyone in when they popped up in the Zoom waiting room.

Our fantastic speaker guests were all ready and assembled, and as the clock ticked down towards 4 pm supply teachers began to pop into the Zoom waiting room. At ten to four we already had fifty people in the waiting room. At a minute to four, there were hundreds. Index finger at the ready, when the clock struck four I began to let them all in.

The next three minutes felt like an eternity. Though all of our attendees entered the waiting room with cameras and microphones off, someone decided to unmute and say hello. This led to hordes more unmuting and saying hello, and turning cameras on to have a good old wave. While it was lovely to see and hear them all - THIS WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. I then nearly had heart failure trying to manually mute them all again - though some were very persistent and kept on popping back up.

To cut a long story short, after a chaotic few minutes, it all settled down and we had a really interesting session, which included lots of great questions typed in the chat that we will follow up on. Though this first session was generic, the feedback we got means we can go on and plan a series of tailored webinars to cover specific topics our agency supply teachers want to know about.

Our speakers were absolutely super, and we know from the feedback we have received since the webinar that most candidates enjoyed it and got something out of it. We had some comments that it was too generic from SEND specialists, so we’ll run a specific webinar for them.

We had feedback from a lot of supply staff who feel that they don’t get any support from schools - this is definitely something we want to look into further and work out a solution for.

As a team, at CandidateGo we really enjoyed the experience, and this new way of communicating with school staff. By getting direct feedback from candidates, we can continue to develop and grow our offering for recruitment agencies.

As with many entrepreneurial ventures, we are aiming for progress not perfection. The big takeaway for me personally, is to find a tech option for the next webinar where attendees can’t turn on their own mics and videos ;)

Look out for the next CandidateGo webinar in the autumn term, where we will delve further into behaviour management for supply staff in schools.