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In France, contract teachers in primary and secondary education are managed in the margins of employment regulation in the education sector. Rather than the central government, it is regional educational districts (académies) who are tasked with hiring them to replace teachers and address shortages in certain subjects. This article examines the recruitment of non-permanent secondary school teachers, drawing on observations and interviews carried out with the different stakeholders involved in this process at the académie level: inspectors, administrative staff, and principals. We thus demonstrate the central role played by the middle management of académies in developing a local teaching market, and analyze the sometimes competing administrative, pedagogical, and subject-related approaches to selection, as well as how the “need” for temporary teachers is defined at the intersection of these approaches.