After establishing my first venture, Rocksteady Music School, serving hundreds of schools in the South of England, I started talking to headteachers about the biggest problems they were facing. Recruitment came top of the list time and time again.

The issue is well documented, with 79 per cent of schools in a 2015 NAHT survey reporting that they ‘found recruitment problematic’ and that they always recruited ‘with some difficulty’. 56 per cent of the schools who responded to the survey also stated that they used recruitment agencies and paid between £1000 and £10,000 per position – that’s a lot of money for any school.

There’s no shortage of places to start with this problem but we decided to begin by radically improving the experience at the start of the journey, from the advertising to the shortlisting stage, whilst also reducing the cost. Designed specifically for recruiting permanent positions, the FindEd website matches vacancies and teachers based on area, role, subject, experience and the age group being taught. It also allows candidates to apply with one click and receive quick feedback from schools. It’s free to teachers and aims to save schools thousands of pounds on their yearly budget, with both free and paid-for subscriptions starting at less than the cost of one standard teacher recruitment advert.

FindEd is launching at Bett 2017 on stand F103, and will be going live for teachers and schools to start using in early February. For more information see https://finded.com or say hello on Twitter @letsfinded