When you think about hiring your first teacher, how do you feel? 🤔 Clueless? Scared? Definitely-not-for-me? Perhaps you’re excited and ready to start ASAP.

We all know hiring a great teacher is important, but hiring the right-fit teacher is vital to you and your business’ wellbeing.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting that first, right-fit teacher onboarded.

Find out more about membership at vibrantmusicteaching.com.

You're listening to the vibrant music teaching podcast.

I'm Nicola Canton, and today on the show we're covering how you

can hire your right fit teacher.

Hello there.

Beautiful DJs.

Now, if you're a long-term listener, we're doing something

a little bit different today.

So let me explain that right off the bat.

We are doing a podcast based on an article that I didn't write.

So normally I write an article or thus far, I guess, on the blog, I

wrote an article and did a podcast together for the whole of 2021.

In 2022, we're trying something a bit different.

Some of the weeks I will write the content and publish the podcast on

record the podcast, the audio version, but some of the weeks, someone else

is writing an article so that we can have different perspectives and

way more diverse topics covered.

Cause obviously everything.

I'm not an expert in everything or anything, but I'm definitely

not an expert in everything.

And so I want us to have a broader base.

I colorful keys.

Now the podcast is a bit different because this is a solo show.

I don't bring on guests or anything like that.

And it's very much based on my perspective, my thoughts.

And you take your inspiration from there.

So what I've decided to do is record my thoughts on the.

Guest posters article each week, as we do these guest articles on the block,

and this podcast will go along with this.

So if you're listening to it on the blog, you're already aware

that that's what's happening.

But if you're listening in the podcast feed know that there is an article, which

is quite different from this episode, since it is from a whole other person's

point of view, this article was written by Joanna Joanna she'll, who is on our team.

She is the.

Editing assistant here at VMT.

So she wrote this article about how to hire the right fit teacher.

And I'm going to give you my perspective on it now that that little

explanation is out of the way, and I won't do that on future episodes.

We'll just dive right in.

But for those of you listening to this first one, it gives you an

idea of where we're coming from.

So the right fit teacher, this was a really interesting topic.

For me to read Joanne assaults on him for me to think about my own perspective

on, because it's something I've really tried to do here at colorful keys.

I decided to take on teachers just a few years ago and I did a mentorship program.

That's the format I went for.

And as you're listening to this in just a short while we're going to have our

new course up, which is all about how to.

Start a mentorship program in your studio.

So if you want to take that approach to everything, then you can definitely check

out that course, if you're a VMT member.

And if you're not, you can go to vmt.ninja and sign up and you'll get access.

Once that course is life as well as access to everything else.

Of course, now I decided on this mentorship approach and.

That was because I wanted to almost nurture the right fit teacher.

So if you don't want to take that approach, if you want to just hire

someone and they kind of do their own thing, or there's not a lot of

guidance from you or training from you, maybe there's a little bit, but

they are more established teacher.

You really need them to be the right fit for what you offer

because a studio, a school with a.

Any kind of identity sets you hope for all sorts of issues, because

you're not going to attract people with all those different identities.

Right?

So your studio stands for something, perhaps you love teaching, using games.

Perhaps you teach adults really well, perhaps you, I don't know, teach hymns.

It could be anything, but there's something that makes you.

And there's something that makes students seek you out if they

have other options available.

So if you don't seek out the right teachers and you've got this mix of

teaching styles and everyone is pretty set that they're doing it the way

they want to do it, you haven't got a studio brand as it were anymore.

You haven't got an identity you're just offering.

Lessons for everyone.

And we've talked many times on the podcast about how that's not the

best idea and not the best route to success, success, and impact, or

an income or anything in between.

So I love this post from Joanna for that reason, because I think

it's such an important topic.

And I also love it because she has such a unique perspective.

I'm going to read you a little bit of the intro.

She says I travel and.

No, I literally travel and teach from the road.

I'm currently writing this article from an Airbnb in Brazil

where I'm learning Portuguese.

How cool is this?

This year?

I took a leap to learn, to turn my solar printer run out of my home studio into a

multi teacher studio school that I could teach at and run from wherever I was.

And while I knew that many of my students were very happy to continue learning

with me online, there were several that really needed and wanted to have

an in-person teacher rather than lose students and have them start over with

a completely new teacher and school.

I decided to hire two teachers to teach in-person lessons.

That would be under my guidance.

So Joanna was based in London and she decided to try.

The world literally and teach from the road since we'd gone mostly online.

And she saw that as an opportunity and that's so exciting, but she knew

she had some students and definitely student applications as well, a waiting

list who didn't want that experience, who didn't want an online teacher.

And who wanted in-person lessons in her style in London.

So she took on two teachers to work at her studio so that she could provide both.

And I think this is just so smart and so savvy on such an interesting approach.

So whether you want to travel the world or not, her ideas about hiring the

right teacher are very, very useful.

First of all, she talks about getting your ducks in a row.

She's talking about getting the right mindset, um, where we're coming from

and where we want to go here, what she means by this, or at least what

I take from it is your identity.

I come back to that word identity.

If you have a core identity as a studio, if you know.

Why you teach, what kind of lessons you want to offer, what you do, that's

different, what you liked in your own lessons that you want to continue,

what you want to be different from how you learned all of those things.

If you can write that down on paper, if you can formalize it, you're much

better and a much better position to be able to actually find a teacher

that works within your studio and fits in with that identity.

And then Joanna stepped into a vision.

So this is where you start to imagine what this perfect studio would look like.

What does your dream studio with these right foot teachers

actually look like in reality?

if you're running this multi teacher studio, how much involvement

do you have in their lessons?

What is the teaching space?

Are they online?

Are they offline?

Are they at students' homes?

All those kinds of considerations.

And what does it feel like as a team is something I would add to this.

It's really important to me that my teachers here and I

feel like a very close to.

And yes, that is especially true because it is a mentorship model.

It's based on us having weekly meetings, where we discuss all the students

and their progress and the plans for the next week, as well as more

general TA training, which we base on the foundations of piano teaching

course from vibrant music teaching.

That is a feeling that we're close knit that we're having

these meetings every week.

Yes.

also, you know, having a laugh together that there's fun in our meetings, just

like there should be in our lessons.

I want that to carry through both that we.

Focused and organized in meetings and lessons.

And that we have fun in both to those are core values of my studio.

So what are your core values?

This is a great starting point for looking for a new teacher.

Whether you want to have a lot of control over their lessons or very little, you

need them to fit in with what your studio.

Is, and your core values.

And I highly suggest writing these down rather than just thinking them,

because our thoughts morph over time.

Right?

If you write them down, you're going to be in a much better position to actually

hold yourself to them, to see whether they feel bright and change them later.

If you want to, and to seek out teachers who really fit with those.

When you interview potential teachers for your studio, you're going to ask,

you know, the basic interview questions, but you're going to want to design

questions that somehow get to these core values so that you can assess whether

this teacher fits in and thinks the way that you do in the way that matters.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be diversity.

I'm just saying in those core values, whatever it is.

That lesson should be fun.

Let's just take that as an example of what could be a core value of your studio.

If you think lessons should be fun, you can ask questions that kind

of in a roundabout way, let you see whether that teacher thinks

that's a valid opinion or not.

And therefore, whether they're going to be a right fit for you.

Like I say, we don't usually look on job sites for our types of roles, at least

in my country, in many countries, we don't, and there doesn't tend to be a

network, a formal network of any kind.

So it does take a while to seek people out, but it's worth taking the time.

If you want to find the right fit teacher for you.

Once you've thought about your core values, your identity as a

studio, you can start to craft your ad or your posting about this job.

This is really important to spend some time on it.

Joanna suggest starting with an introduction about your studio.

I think that's a great place to start.

So writing a few sentences, if you paragraphs about why your studio is

a great place to work and what kind of a place it is so that you can

be really clear from the outset of what they should expect from this

business, then describe the perfect teacher who would fit right in.

So what are the key skills you want them to have?

You can have requirements.

They need a grade eight or they need a degree or they need this or

that, but you should also have some key skills, key, um, parts of the

role that you want them to fulfill.

So is it important to you that they're very organized person, that they

communicate well, et cetera, et cetera.

These are all a little bit wishy-washy in some ways, but

it's great to put them in there.

Not so that you can narrow down the prospects.

In any way, really?

Because generally anyone applying for a job is going to look at that list.

If they're taking the job application seriously, they're going to look

at that list and say that they are all of those things, right?

They're all positive attributes.

They're going to claim to have those attributes.

But what it does help you do is get clear around what you're looking for and

put out the right message of the kind of teacher you want to attract as well.

Then Joanna suggests including some bonus questions.

And I think this is a great thing to do as well.

And she means open-ended questions here.

So by that there's no, yes or no.

There's no check box.

It's like a paragraph space.

There's a text box space.

Or if it's a physical form, somehow there's a box.

There's a few lines in the box where they're going to write something.

These can be things related to your core values.

They could be more general, but the reason Dharana suggest this and the

reason I'm on board with it as well, is that the teacher applying for it,

if they fill that in properly and they use, you know, good grammar, they

craft a thorough, thoughtful response.

It shows that they put some time into it that they're really

serious about applying for this.

And if you do end up getting a lot of applications, that's

going to be really useful.

Now you may only have a couple of obligations to sort through, but if

you do have a lot of them to sort through, it's really good to have

something to sort of filter by that.

If they kind of have.

tried.

I'm supposed to use another word if they kind of have tried those questions,

instead of really thinking about their answers that shows you that maybe they

were just applying for the sake of it.

They weren't really serious about the position or they didn't

want your studio specifically.

Like they didn't seek at this position.

They were just imply applying for a whole load of stuff.

Maybe some non-music teaching and some music teaching anything that would be.

Of course, that is totally fair enough.

If you're job seeking right now and listening to this, I get it.

You have to apply to so many, but as studio owners, we want

really dedicated teachers.

It's almost a vocation rather than a profession sometimes.

And we need people who really buy into doing this as their job, as

their career and take it through.

So from there, once you have your job post crafted and really do take time

over that and get it right, it will do everything for you, but it does set

things up, set the expectations for them, and also frame things for you.

As you go into the interview process and everything.

Once you have it, you can start to post about it.

So this is really dependent on where you live.

I find.

You may find that it's great to post on job posting sites like Gumtree

and some countries or indeed, or jobs or whatever, those kinds of sites

you may find that beneficial you may find as I've found here in Ireland.

Private music teachers don't actually look there because they don't

expect jobs to be posted there.

So it's very rare that I get a reply on one of those.

I do post on the likes of Gumtree, but the kind of paid job sites I

never bother with because yeah, the teachers just don't look there.

So there's no point.

What is useful in Ireland is looking to Facebook groups of local

Facebook groups of music teachers.

There's one.

Substitute music teaching.

And although it's designed around finding substitute teachers for

schools, it is actually a great place to post it by a private music teaching.

Cause there's often a lot of people who do both those things, right.

They combine those in their portfolio career.

They have music teaching and schools.

Plus they also teach violin or piano or something as well.

And they combine.

So, those can be a great place to try local universities and your own network.

So ask around post on your social media, your studio's page, but also

your, your personal page, because.

This is a local position.

Well, assuming it is local and you're not hiring someone who

could be on the other side of the world world, cause it's online.

If it is local, it's a local position.

So use your own network.

If you have one and start reaching out to local schools, local universities, to dry,

make connections to find the right person.

It does take a long time for most to find the right person because.

The thought.

I want to leave you with.

If you're thinking about hiring another teacher is something

I heard a long time ago.

I don't know whether it's attributable to anyone, but it's hire slowly fire quickly.

And.

I prefer to not fire at all because I hire so slowly, meaning take

your time finding the right person.

Don't jump into it.

It is so much harder to let someone go than to just pass on them initially to

say, oh, it's not the right fit after the interview or in the application process.

I know it's, it's like looking for new students, right?

It can be so frustrating.

And so you can start to feel a bit desperate.

You can start to feel like, well, I just have to take the they'll

have to do, but that is not a good way to go into that relationship.

And if you have those feelings in your gut, that they are not a good

fit for your studio, trust it.

It's right.

I mean, unpack it, decide why it is so that you can be informed for

future and make a good decision.

But if you have that strong feeling that they just will not fit in with the way you

teach or your students don't hire them.

Wait as painful as it may be.

Be patient wait for the right person and keep advertising

and keep seeking out that.

Right.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you got something out of it.

If you're looking to hire another teacher, if you're not looking to

hire another teacher, definitely it's still worth setting out your core

values, defining your identity and thinking about that because it informs

you and why you hire yourself, right?

Why you're in your studio as well.

You're one thing this week is to write out a job description

for a teacher in your studio.

If you're actually hiring someone or looking to start.

The process of looking for someone, then you can use this as a basis

for a job description that you post on a job recruitment site.

Or on Facebook or on your website?

If you're not, I want you to write it out and then take a look at

it and see whether you would hire yourself based on these criteria.

If you wouldn't, if there's something you feel would be

lacking or might make you hesitate.

Then seek out some professional development that will help you

improve in that area to make you the ideal hire for your studio I'll

see you in the next episode of the vibrant music teaching podcast.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

If you ever get overwhelmed by all the different teacher training options.

They're vibrant music teaching is the place for you.

We nicknamed flamingos because they're masters of balancing all of

the things and making it all work in a way that isn't overwhelming.

We have tools to help you do that inside vibrant music teaching.