Montgomery County’s public school system is no different from the many others around the D.C. area in terms of filling all the job openings that it has. It can be hard, for a variety of reasons, to get people in the door. But what if you bring the door to the people?
That’s more or less the concept of a new mobile recruitment bus unveiled by the county at Wheaton Woods Elementary in Rockville, Maryland, Wednesday. The county took an old school bus and turned it into a mobile HR department.
“It could be one-stop shopping, so to speak,” said Ella Couplin, the director of talent acquisition in the county. “Anyone who’s interested in working for MCPS, you can come on the bus, you can apply for a job, you can get fingerprinted, you can get interviewed and you never have to step foot into our offices. We’ll come straight to you, and your community.”
Even before the ribbon was cut on Wednesday, there were people stopping by to talk with school leaders about different job openings. The positions range from those inside the classroom, to jobs based anywhere from cafeterias to the transportation department.
“This is a community-based elementary school,” said Couplin, talking about Wheaton Woods Elementary. “And so how nice would it be for the community to be able to walk to their job? And so sometimes people have never thought about being able to work at their local school.”
This bus could make it a little bit easier to do that.
“We have so many different facets of Team MCPS that need support,” said Superintendent Thomas Taylor. “We can go on the road, and we can do every aspect of our job, hiring and interview process on the road, and we don’t have to wait for somebody to come to the office to make that happen.”
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