The other day I was pleased to hear from David Bowen the Marketing manager of TES "The Times Educational Supplement", a paper I have know for many years albeit only as paper delivery boy! So I have to admit that is about as much as I know and of course we didn’t have Internet in those days.

David asked me if I would do a pre launch review, which comes on the back of the recent National Online Recruitment Awards. Obviously as I am not a teacher and as such my perspective may be slightly off, I do have a good feel for job boards from my constant use over the years.

Having registered and applied for a couple of their positions, I found the site to be very easy to navigate and non time consuming, a huge plus and makes up for its lack of a sophisticated search function. In fact their browse facility is great, as it is simple and logical, you can just pick the educational level then the subject and then apply, very easy and short steps.

What it does lack is a simple way to apply for these roles, which would not only benefit the candidates but also give TES some valuable self promotion. It doesnt need to be sophisticated. For example when a canidate clicks on an email address, with some simple coding you could get the subject box to be filled automatically, with the vacancy number and the fact it is from TES invaluable for all.

Another area which I really like is their own blog, which is written by a number of senior people within the industry. Now if they just add a blogroll for other teacher bloggers, it would then add a more varied and interesting perspective.

Fundamentally it’s the simplicity at the end of the day which will make it work, with all the huge relevant and detailed content available for teachers, for me this mix gives TES a winning combination compared to the other more sophisticated systems out there.

Tags: Teacher Jobboard, TES, Times educational supplement, recruitment, teaching jobs

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