Childcare recruitment ideas: 20 ways centers find teachers in a shortage

Recruiting does not have to start with a budget line.

The channels below cost little more than director time, and several of them compound: every hire you keep makes the next one easier to find.

• 1. Post where early educators already look. A listing that never reaches working teachers cannot fill a room. Put the role on the boards early educators actually search, under a title that matches the work — "infant room assistant", not "staff member" — and look at what candidates see on the other side first: the childcare teacher jobs board shows how centers frame titles, schedules and pay. Our guide to where to post childcare jobs walks the options. When the ad reads right, post it on ChildcareHires, where the audience is early educators.
• 2. Re-engage people who already said yes once. Keep every solid applicant who did not get the job, and every strong former employee who left on good terms, in one bench file. When a seat opens, that file is your first day of recruiting — a call to someone who already interviewed well beats a week of waiting for fresh applications.
• 3. Put a hiring sign where your neighborhood walks. A window sign with the role, the schedule and a phone number works on people who pass your building every day. Make it readable from the sidewalk and say how to apply; a sign that only says "we're hiring" sends motivated people home empty-handed.
• 4. Turn word of mouth into a system. Tell your current staff exactly which role is open, the schedule it covers, and how a contact should apply. Hand them something forwardable — a short description they can text — so recommending your center takes one tap. Ask explicitly rather than waiting for a staff member to guess what you need.
• 5. Work the boards your community already reads. Library bulletin boards, places of worship, grocery stores, community centers and local online groups reach people who live close enough to actually take the schedule. Keep the flyer to the facts candidates search on: age group, title, schedule, pay, and how to apply.
• 6. Post on social media with the platform's ad rules in mind. A "we're hiring" post from your center's page costs nothing, but Meta requires employment ads to run under its Special Ad Category — and for US advertisers, Meta limits or makes unavailable age, gender, ZIP-code targeting, exclusion targeting, lookalike audiences and saved audiences. Write the post to be shared rather than targeted: the room, the role, the schedule, and how to apply.
• 7. Recruit retirees and career changers deliberately. They look in different places than a college senior does — community groups, volunteer organizations, faith communities, continuing-education and workforce programs — so match the channel to the person. An ad that explains the training path you will support gives a career changer permission to apply; if your area has a workforce program that places adults into early-childhood training, one relationship there beats a season of postings.

The people already around your program — staff and enrolled families — are a recruiting channel that costs little to run, and a referral arrives already knowing what the work actually looks like.

• 8. Pay for referrals — structure matters more than size. A referral program turns your staff into recruiters. Set the amount once, in writing, and apply the same rules to everyone. Pay part when the new hire finishes orientation and the rest after a set stay period, so the incentive rewards a hire who lasts rather than one who merely starts. Keep the payment rules in your handbook so the program survives its first success.
• 9. Tell enrolled families you are hiring. Add a short hiring note to the newsletter, the family app and the sign-in table while a role is open: who you are looking for, the schedule, and how to apply or refer someone. Give families the specifics to pass on — a role title and a way to reach you — rather than a vague "we're hiring."
• 10. Make family referrals explicit. If a family's recommendation leads to a hire, thank them the way you would thank a staff member. The mechanics matter less than the ask: one line in the handbook and one mention at pickup beat an unspoken hope that families will think of it.
• 11. Promote from within before you post the role. Promoting a capable assistant into the lead seat fills the role with someone who already knows your program, opens an assistant seat you can recruit for alongside it, and keeps a proven person in your program — it is a recruiting and a retention move at once. Before you make the move, confirm the lead-teacher qualifications with your state child care licensing agency.

Pipelines take longer to build than a posting takes to publish, but they produce candidates year after year — people who have already chosen early childhood education and need somewhere to work while they study or train.

• 12. Connect with high-school teaching pathways. If your area's high schools run early-childhood career and technical education programs, their students have already chosen the field. Ask the instructor about hosting classroom hours or speaking to the class, and keep an application path open for graduates — the senior who visited your infant room in fall is next year's applicant.
• 13. Get to know the ECE programs within commuting distance. Community colleges and universities with early-childhood programs graduate people who need jobs in the field. Send your openings to the department and the career-services office, and ask about practicum or student-teaching placements: a student who completes a placement in your building knows the rooms, the lead and the schedule before you ever post the job.
• 14. List your jobs with Federal Work-Study. Federal Work-Study regulations (34 CFR 675.2) count child care among the "community services" that Work-Study funds can pay for, and colleges must spend at least 7 percent of their Work-Study allocations on community-service jobs. The regulation names campus child care open to the community as one example. Ask the financial-aid office how a Work-Study placement at your center would be counted and funded.
• 15. If your center is for-profit, ask about the academic-relevance rule. Colleges may use up to 25 percent of Work-Study funds for students working at private for-profit employers, and that work must be academically relevant to the student's program — which usually means the role fits an ECE major's studies. Lead with what the student will learn in your classrooms, not only with the hours you need covered.
• 16. Grow teachers through registered apprenticeship. Federal registered-apprenticeship standards (29 CFR 29.5) set the frame: a term measured by at least 2,000 hours of on-the-job learning, demonstrated competency, or a hybrid; a recommended minimum of 144 hours of related instruction per year; and a wage schedule that rises progressively from no less than the FLSA minimum wage. Standards also include a numeric apprentice-to-journeyworker ratio for proper supervision, periodic performance review and safe training facilities. Apprenticeship.gov lists Early Childhood Educator and Early Childhood/PRE-K Teacher among education-sector apprenticeship occupations.
• 17. Sponsor credentials, not just jobs. The T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood scholarship model is cost-shared: it pays most of tuition, books and travel, often requires paid release time from the sponsoring employer, awards a bonus or raise when the recipient completes credit hours, and requires the recipient to stay with the sponsoring program for a set period. T.E.A.C.H. is not everywhere — the National Center's directory listed programs in 21 states as of October 2026, with Tennessee listed for its WAGE$ supplement only — so check the directory for your state before you promise sponsorship in an ad.

Events trade your time for volume: many short conversations in one afternoon instead of weeks of one-at-a-time phone screens.

They suit a small center best when the role is defined and the role sheet is printed before the first candidate walks in.

• 18. Hold an open house or walk-in interview day. Pick a window when your rooms are staffed, post it wherever your flyers go, and let candidates see the classroom and talk the same day. Bring a one-page role sheet — duties, schedule, pay, qualifications — and a short script so every candidate gets the same conversation.
• 19. Share a job fair with programs near you. If your area hosts job fairs, one table can serve several centers: team up with nearby programs to share the cost and the space. Bring role sheets that answer the schedule and pay questions up front, and send whoever can answer those questions without checking with you first.
• 20. Use agency staff to buy time while you recruit. A staffing agency can keep coverage in place while the search runs, so recruiting does not turn into an emergency placement. Treat it as a bridge, not a solution — and note that agency temps and contracted substitutes count as child care staff members under the CCDF background-check rules, so the checks apply to them as they would to any direct hire. How staffing agencies work for childcare covers the tradeoffs.

Slow down before a fast hire starts work. Under the federal CCDF rules at 45 CFR 98.43(d)(4), a new hire may begin work after a qualifying result on either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint check, but until every component clears they must be supervised at all times by a staff member with a qualifying background check.

Caring for Our Children Basics, a July 2025 publication from ACF's Office of Child Care, calls for completing checks within 45 days and re-screening staff at least every 5 years.

States can add to that federal floor.

Confirm your state's sequencing and paperwork with your state child care licensing agency before you promise any start date at an event — the background-check process guide walks the steps.

Keep the event itself lawful. EEOC-enforced laws bar asking disability-related questions before a job offer, and EEOC guidance says to keep pre-employment questions to what is essential to judge qualifications and to avoid questions that would reveal race, sex, national origin, disability, age, religion, color or ancestry.

That applies to the ad as much as the interview: an ad seeking "young, energetic" or female-only staff states a preference the law does not allow.

The interview process guide covers what to ask and what to skip.

Recruiting ideas are only as good as your record of which ones worked.

Ask every applicant how they heard about you, and log the answer next to the channel that produced them.

A simple sheet is enough: channel, applicants, interviews, offers, hires — and who is still on your schedule after the first months.

Compare channels a season at a time rather than hire by hire.

Drop the ones that produce applicants but no hires, and note which channel's hires stay: a channel that fills the room but empties it again by summer has not solved anything, because keeping the staff you hire is the other half of recruiting — keeping childcare staff covers that side.

Cost your time too.

An idea that eats your whole week is not free even when no money changes hands, so track what each channel cost in director hours as well as dollars.

Once applications start arriving, recruiting hands off to process: the step-by-step hiring process covers screening, interviewing, background checks, offers and onboarding from the moment a candidate replies.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Background-check components and sequencing are set by your state child care licensing agency under the federal CCDF floor; interviewing and job-ad rules are enforced by the EEOC; apprenticeship, Work-Study and scholarship structures have their own program rules; and advertising platforms set their own ad policies. Confirm the current rules with the agency or program that administers them before you hire, advertise or set a start date.