Case Study: Recruiting In New Online Teacher Markets

In Q3 of 2025 one of our clients, an online English education provider, secured a large-scale contract with the Brazilian Ministry of Education. They needed a triple-figure bilingual English-Portuguese online teaching team built from scratch — in a market they had limited presence in, to a timeline that was out of their control, with a profile that was highly specific in a complex environment. 

They needed: 

1. Access to a niche bilingual talent pool, fast. 
2. The ability to process candidate applications meticulously but at scale. 
3. Infrastructure to manage multi-stage vetting across time zones. 
4. The agility to adapt to evolving requirements without losing momentum.

And they needed it all handled. Completely. That's where we came in.

When recruiting in bulk, precision can be sacrificed by speed without the right structures in place. The real challenge is designing a system that delivers both consistently, even during ramp up periods. We had our work cut out for us!”

— Marika Boje, Global Recruitment Director at The Really Great Teacher Company

This project was unique and required expanded recruitment knowledge and localized efforts to find and attract ideal candidates.

1. A Specific Talent Pool

The required teacher profile was specific - bilingual, possessing a high level of proficiency, qualifications, experience, and tech readiness. Finding this unique intersection of suitable (and available) candidates while remaining price competitive considerably narrowed the scope.

2. Market-Specific Barriers

• Language barriers impacted early-stage screening – 90% of resumes were submitted in Portuguese and first had to be translated.
• Documentation and response timelines were on average 6 days longer than our global averages. In fact, 70% of candidates did not progress simply due to slow or no responses. This significantly impacted pipeline progress.
• Local job platforms required regional business registration credentials.

3. Uncommon Candidate Patterns

• Unusually slow communication with recruiters. 
• Very sceptical of scams and thus untrusting of a company they didn't know and hesitant to share documentation. 
• High no-show rates for interviews, which meant lost hours where recruiters could have been interviewing promising candidates. 
• Late-stage drop-offs (30%) due to schedule alignment.

You can’t apply a global recruitment playbook to a local market - you have to localize and learn fast.”

— Rob Schulenburg, Chief Operations Officer (COO) at The Really Great Teacher Company

As the project progressed for the Brazilian Ministry of Education, the teacher profile further developed, which resulted in various deployment delays: 

→  Experience requirements increased – from 1 year to 3. 

→  Qualification criteria became more specialized – no longer acceptive of a degree in any field. 
→  Additional compliance steps added – language testing and background checks were introduced mid-process and added 2-4 weeks to the recruitment timeline. 
→  Start dates shifted – making it difficult to keep candidates warm.

Each new adjustment added complexity and further narrowed the candidate pool. But rather than slowing delivery, we focused on absorbing and operationalizing these changes quickly.

In large scale recruitment, rigidity kills momentum. Our team’s job is to adapt to moving targets without letting them break our pipeline.”

— James Thomson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at The Really Great Teacher Company

Large-scale recruitment rarely follows a straight line. This project was no exception, and we experienced candidate fluctuations on top of the evolving brief: 

→  Pipeline loss due to delayed starts despite keep-warm tactics. 
→  High absenteeism for scheduled interviews. 
→  Seasonal slowdowns during peak holiday periods, when applications dropped by 13%. 
→  Establishing a trusted name in a market that didn’t know us. Rather than treating challenges as setbacks, we used them as data points to refine the system in real time.

There was no single breakthrough - only a series of fast, deliberate, high-impact adjustments that we made, so that our client didn't have to.

1. Process Optimization

• Integrated compliance steps into earlier stages of the funnel, when candidates were most responsive. 
• Mitigated timeline shifts caused by the additional requirements through implementing different recruitment strategies, reducing time-to-hire by 6 days. 
• Improved candidate handoffs between recruitment and operations by reducing coordination lags across time zone gaps. 

2. Throughput Protection

• Introduced more refined interview formats to maximize capacity and offset high no-show rates. 
• Maintained consistent daily interview volumes — even during low-application holiday periods such as Christmas, New Year and Carnival. 

3. Candidate Experience Enhancements

• Embedded schedule walkthroughs earlier to reduce late-stage drop-offs due to conflicts. 
• Implemented translation tooling to accelerate screening. 

4. Relentless Drive

• The team truly showcased their passion and commitment to maintaining high daily activity levels — regardless of external conditions.

Consistency is what builds pipelines. Not spikes of effort, but daily discipline.”

— Rob Schulenburg, Chief Operations Officer (COO) at The Really Great Teacher Company

Despite the complexity, challenges, and changes during this project, we are excited about the results so far: 

• Cost per hire: It yielded the lowest cost per hire we’ve ever recorded. Despite the expenses involved in exploring additional, localized avenues, this cost has on average been half of what we typically see across global regions.
• Application volumes: Grew by 60% within the first two months as the pipeline expanded, with 74% of candidates proceeding to the interview stage.
• Time-to-hire: Maintaining an optimal timeline following process efficiencies.

February 2026 officially marked the start of classes! 

This was a critical milestone - not just in hiring, but in real-world educational impact. Brazilian teachers were given new, global work opportunities, students were met by really great teachers, and our client successfully activated a key growth initiative. 

But the work continues. Recruitment on this project is ongoing due to the successful delivery thus far that has resulted in additional orders.

The real measure of success isn’t just how many teachers we can hire, but the impact they make on their students through quality lesson delivery once they start!”

— James Thomson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at The Really Great Teacher Company

This project highlights a broader truth for education organisations scaling globally: 

1. Difficult teacher profiles require specialized recruitment infrastructure. 
2. Speed at scale demands process engineering - not just bulk sourcing. 
3. Market nuances can’t be ignored, they must be built into the strategy. 
4. Adaptability is not optional in long-cycle hiring projects, it requires ongoing flexibility and open feedback and communication. 

Initiatives that drive growth are hardly ever a perfectly linear success story. 

Sometimes the brief changes, or the market pushes back, or external factors disrupt momentum. Delivery is achievable, when systems are designed to withstand complexity and adapt under pressure.

HIRE TEACHERS