​You have posted the advert. You have waited. And the applications that have come back are not quite what you were hoping for. Either the volume is low, the candidates are not the right fit, or the people you actually wanted to attract never applied at all.

It is a frustrating position to be in, and it is more common than most schools realise. The good news is that in most cases, the problem is not that the right teachers are not out there. It is that the advert is not reaching them, or not speaking to them, in the right way.

Here is what is usually going wrong and exactly what you can do about it.

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The Market Has Shifted and Most Adverts Have Not Caught Up

Secondary teacher job adverts are down 32% on last year and 46% lower than in the pre-pandemic 2018/19 academic year. On the surface that sounds like less competition for schools. But the reality is more complicated. Although there are fewer roles on the market, competition for high-quality candidates has not disappeared.

The best teachers, the ones you actually want, are not desperately scrolling through job boards. Demand for excellent teachers is high, creating a job market where candidates can afford to be selective about where they apply. That means your advert is not just competing with other schools for attention. It is competing with a teacher's natural instinct to stay put unless something genuinely catches their eye.

If your advert reads like every other advert, you have already lost them.

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The Most Common Mistakes Schools Make

Generic job titles and copy-pasted descriptions. The DfE's own Teaching Vacancies service is clear on this: this is a chance to demonstrate what makes your school different from the rest, so think carefully about how you want to sell yourself and look to write a unique description tailored to the role you are recruiting for, rather than copying and pasting something from your school's website.

Most school job adverts do exactly the opposite. The same opening paragraph, the same list of duties, the same boilerplate about being an Ofsted-rated school. Candidates have seen it all before and scroll straight past.

Salary information that requires a decoder ring. Abbreviations like MPS, UPS or L1-L3 mean something inside your school. They may not mean much to a candidate applying from outside your trust or local authority. Avoid referring to pay in a way that does not make sense to people outside your organisation. Make it easy for candidates by providing a straightforward numerical value. Transparency on salary is not just good practice. It directly affects how many relevant people click through.

Too long or too short. Both extremes damage applications. Analysis of applications made through Teaching Vacancies suggests that around 300 to 500 words is the optimal amount of text to present to jobseekers. Any less and you are potentially leaving out something important. Any more and you risk providing too much unnecessary information. Most schools either undersell the role in two paragraphs or overwhelm candidates with a lengthy person specification that reads like a legal document.

Forgetting to sell the school, not just the job. Teachers are not just choosing a role. They are choosing a place to work, a leadership team to trust, and a culture to be part of. Jobseekers are just as interested in where they will be working and who they will be working with as they are in the role itself. If your advert does not give them a genuine feel for the school, you are missing the most persuasive part of the pitch.

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What Actually Makes Teachers Apply

Research published by the Education Endowment Foundation and Teacher Tapp in October 2025, based on survey experiments with around 6,000 teachers across England, is specific about what moves the needle. Concrete incentives including childcare subsidies, specific flexible working commitments, and protected time for marking make teachers more likely to respond to job advertisements. Specific working conditions can make a difference comparable to a 10% salary increase.

That is significant. You may not be able to offer a higher salary than the school down the road. But you might be able to offer something they cannot, whether that is protected PPA time, a genuine commitment to flexible working, strong CPD, or a culture where staff are trusted and respected.

The key word in that research is "specific." Vague promises about wellbeing and work-life balance are in every advert. Concrete commitments, the kind that a teacher can picture on a Monday morning, are what stand out.

A few other things with strong evidence behind them. Inviting candidates to visit the school prior to application can lead to a 140% increase in applications. Including career development and CPD in your advert can increase applications by 150%. These are not small uplifts. They are the kind of changes that can transform the response to a role that would otherwise sit unfilled.

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Practical Steps You Can Take Right Now

Rewrite your opening line. It should tell a candidate something real and specific about your school in one sentence. Not "we are a thriving and supportive school." Something like: "Our maths department has just been rebuilt from scratch and we are looking for someone to help shape what it becomes."

List concrete benefits, not buzzwords. Free parking, healthcare plan, off-site PPA, a structured ECT programme, a no-marking-policy. If you have got them, say so clearly.

Show the salary as a number. Always. Even a range is better than a code.

Mention CPD and development explicitly. Teachers who are ambitious want to know there is a path forward. If you invest in your staff, make that visible.

Broaden where you post. Great job advert marketing is not just about publishing on the best education job boards. It is also about publishing across as many channels as possible. By casting your net wide, you ensure you do not miss out on great teachers just because they are not looking in the right places.

Consider working with a specialist agency. Sometimes the best candidates are not actively browsing job boards at all. They are already in roles, and they need a trusted contact to bring the right opportunity to them at the right time. That is where a specialist education recruitment agency adds real value, not just filling posts but reaching people a standard advert cannot.

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At Link3 Recruitment, we work with schools across the Midlands every day to find the right people for the right roles. If your adverts are not delivering the candidates you need, we can help you think about why, and what to do differently.

Get in touch with the Link3 Recruitment team today. Visit: www.link3recruitment.co.uk | Call: 0115 6972550