SubAssistant

I recently did a blog post about the woes of getting those early morning phone calls for jobs or waking up early to job shop online with the hopes that maybe just maybe something will pop up while you are online.

Well, those days are behind us folks. 

You see, I've discovered a handy little website/app that will alert you when a job gets posted. 

The nice thing is if you are skeptical they offer a 21 day free trial. I can pretty much guarantee that you will get at least one job during that time that you wouldn't have had you not been using this service. After that it will only cost you $7.95/month (and I've done my research - it is one of the cheaper options available). I'm not sure how much we all make for a full day of substitute teaching but here we make over $100... that means that if you accept just one job a month through the service... a job that you likely wouldn't have seen had you not been using the service it will have already paid for itself. 

Now that I'm a teacher with a classroom of my own I feel like I have a better understanding of when jobs actually might get posted... If I've signed myself up for a professional development day I will usually put in my sub request just after I book it... and I tend to book these things while at work which means I'm GUESSING a lot of jobs get posted between the hours of 8am-5pm (a time that I would normally not be sitting online checking for jobs or calling the SubFinder service so it's nice that there is an app that will do the looking for me). 

Another great thing about this particular service is that they are able to check a few different SubFinder programs... a few years ago I was in multiple divisions that each had a different site they used to book their substitutes. What a pain it would have been to have to sign up for 3 different services.. Subassistant will check your Aesop (both Canadian and American), SubFinder, SubFindExpress, and SubFinder elite (3 of these just so happened to be the 3 programs that the divisions I was in were using... if there are anymore programs out there than these 4 then I'm just not familiar with them). 

How it Works:

1) a teacher posts a substitute job online 

2) SubAssistant will send you a text message, email, or an app notification alerting you that a new job has been posted (they will do this right away) 

Here is what a list of available jobs would look like from in the SubAssistant app.  Just click on them to accept!

3) You can either accept it right away or you can then sign in to the substitute program and accept it from there. Personally, I always accepted my jobs from the substitute program because I liked to be able to read any notes the teacher had posted before I accepted (or rejected) the job. But now that I think of it you could use the EasyAccept feature then go online at your earliest convenience, read the full job, and then if you decide it really isn't for you turn the job down. 

Here is an example of how easy the EasyAccept feature is...  does this 6th grade job look appealing to you?  Just click the "Accept" button and it's yours!

But seriously, you should probably sign up for the 21 day free trial here...what have you got to lose? Except the possibility of being kept more busy substitute teacher than you have in months.

 I suppose the only downside to this would be if you don't have a cell phone. If you don't have a cell phone this service won't be much help to you because the point of it is you see the jobs being posted before many others... if you have it set up to just email you I guess it is a good start but then you have to be sitting near your computer all the time waiting for an alert about a new email message. 

So, are you going to try SubAssistant? Are you already a loyal SubAssistant subscriber? 

Post your stories below!