The seven-year-old was asked what he noticed most about his new teacher.“Her bum,” he answered.

“What do you mean by that?” the questioner replied.

“Well, every time we come into the classroom, she’s got her head in the cupboard getting stuff ready for the lesson,” said the boy. “And all you can see is her bum.”

Barry Hancock is telling students about his experiences supervising new teachers and offering them some basic lessons in how to improve their classroom act. Unofficially, he is teaching’s recruiting sergeant - touring colleges up and down the country every year, lecturing students on how to sell themselves to schools.

It may be reassuring to harassed headteachers struggling to fill vacancies to learn that someone is out there drumming up enthusiasm for the job. In the process, Hancock has helped his authority, Redbridge in north-east London, to avoid the worst of today’s job crisis. Headteachers in the borough will tell you that they are not untouched by today’s shortages but, in comparison with their neighbours, they are well off.

Hazel Farrow is head of Loxford School of Science and Technology in south Ilford, bordering Barking and Newham, both boroughs that pay the full London allowance compared with Redbridge’s outer London tariff. “Barry’s work makes a real difference to our schools,” she says. “He has raised the profile of Redbridge so that young teachers know it is a good place to start their careers.”

Sandy Dargon, head of Gilbert Colvin primary school in Clayhall, says:

“Barry is a charismatic character who sells Redbridge very well. He encourages the young teachers and tells them about education as he feels it is.”

There’s an evangelical fervour about Hancock as he tours the colleges of higher education and universities of the land. He has a straightforward message to deliver to students: “You are good at what you’ve been trained to do. Take yourselves and the job seriously. This is what headteachers and governors are looking for. Package yourself up properly and then go sell yourselves!” Nearly 10,000 students are exhorted in this manner every academic year in 55 different venues. And the result is always the same: the would-be teachers walk tall from the room and enter the marketplace of teacher-recruitment fairs full of self-belief.

“Barry’s lectures are always inspiring,” says Nesta James, in charge of careers at Trinity College, Carmarthen, south Wales. “His talks are funny and practical and the nice thing about him is that he’s not pushing his own authority but the concept of teaching generally.”

Recruiting sergeant is an apt description for the job Hancock and his colleagues do. Most local education authorities employ what they call RSMs: recruitment strategy managers, who aim to lure as many good trainee teachers as they can to their authorities. In some, such as Essex, staff turnover is 20 per cent, and that demands an awful lot of new faces every year. Which is why Hancock developed the lecture tour to enhance his borough’s reputation.

He started in 1992 when he visited seven colleges. The talks proved such a hit that the next year he had 17 invitations and it has grown from there.

His talks are full of useful tips to help candidates cope with application forms: “Tell them about your special skills, your philosophies, what you did well on teaching practice, no more than two sides of A4.”

And how to respond at interview: “Try to mould your answers in two minutes using examples of your achievements and your good teaching.”

He explains the difference between opened-ended questions - “They’re designed to make you talk, so talk!” - and the awkward, closed questions that students can turn into a chance to be positive.

He also mentions those answers that candidates are determined to deliver whether they’re asked about the topic or not. “Sometimes, the answer is so good that the interviewers think they must have asked a really good question.”

But the strongest emphasis is on getting the students to be realistic about what they have achieved and to make the most of selling those talents to schools.

His remarks are reflective, amusing, thought-provoking: “Don’t say you want to be a teacher because you love children. Start loving them and you’ll finish up inside. Tell the interview panel you love teaching children.”

Or: “Don’t be complacent. Are you not only needed, but also wanted? Make sure that’s the emphasis you communicate.”

More comfortingly: “Remember that the best interviews always take place on the way home.”

Most importantly, his comments seem to strike a chord and engage the students in the daunting process of finding jobs for next September.

One positive message that Hancock gives off subconsciously is the success he has enjoyed and his enthusiasm for the job. He was a deputy head at 28 after starting as a design-technology teacher.

“We were one step up from caretaker. We wore brown coats to keep clothes clean, but we really wore them to keep warm. A lot of pupils with learning difficulties were sent to us, which was a bit like a javelin thrown into a room full of machinery.”

He then tells an engaging tale of John, a troubled 14-year-old school refusenik who was brought to his workshop and who had a magazine sticking out of his pocket. It was about lorries. Hancock seized on an enthusiasm in John’s otherwise negative world to engage him in all areas of the curriculum: writing - through sending off letters for information; maths - through calibrations and design; geography - through plotting routes and finding out where materials originated. It is a heartwarming story made all the more enjoyable by learning that John eventually passed two O-levels and one CSE. Today, he owns a roofing company and, naturally, his own lorry.

Hancock is not fazed by the latest teacher shortages: these things come in cycles: 1988 and 1993 and 1997 were also difficult times, he recalls.

“We used to have a chemistry test in the late Eighties when there were no science teachers to be found: when the applicant comes, lock the door, put a mirror in front of his face. If it steams up, indicating life, offer him the job.”

Back in the lecture hall, Hancock is warning the aspiring teachers why they shouldn’t go into parents’ evenings with guns blazing. He tells them about the time two aggressive parents confronted him over things he had allegedly told their son.

“Well, Mr and Mrs Tyldesley,” Hancock replies with a twinkle in his eye, “if I believed everything your son told me about what happens at home, we’d never get anywhere, would we?”

HOW TO LURE NEW STAFF

* Encourage teachers fresh out of college to bring a friend with them when they visit - doubling your potential recruitment * Offer extra points for experience, double if necessary * Childcare - available in some community schools * Commitment to providing continuing professional development (training) * Guaranteed support for teachers who want to do further study (MAs, Open University) * Employing teachers fresh from college before the summer holidays or finding them paid work during the summer Source: NAHT