Everyone in education understands the importance of having high quality leaders in schools. It has a significant impact on school climate, culture, and student outcomes. So, finding the best person for each leadership role is critical and we decided to take a different approach to hiring for a leadership role recently.
Over the past couple of years, we have heard, experienced, and experimented with a couple different interview processes for school leaders. We have embedded videos of teachers as part of the interview process and asked candidates to conduct a role-play feedback session with the teacher. We have had them hold a role-play with a parent around a particular parent issue. We have dabbled with giving them a data-set or an authentic email to write, but we stopped at that level. They are time-consuming activities that didn’t apply to each of the members of the panel. All of those took place within a 30 to 40 minute panel style interview during a marathon day of interviewing. Essentially, for 5 candidates we would take approximately 4 hours to interview and then deliberate for another hour. However, after all that time and effort our level of understanding about a candidates skill level or experience in a particular area was limited to a 2 to 4 minute response to a question. The depth of the conversation was limited and candidates could basically ‘interview’ themselves into a position. Sound familiar?
We knew it really wasn’t effective and sort of dreaded the interview process…so we decided to change it. My colleague (Jeff Menzer) and I had some experience working with other organizations (such as Delaware Leadership Project) and found some of their selection processes to be more meaningful and engaging for both the interviewer and the candidate. Some were radically different than the traditional approach. They were using a rotational model of interviewing whereby candidates would be present for a longer amount of time and move from station to station meeting with different groups of people and discussing different topics at a much deeper level. Pretty cool…pretty different...So, after some discussion, we decided to go for it and make it happen in our district!
Here’s what we did...Jeff and I brainstormed the process and what the day would look like. We outlined a process to make it happen. In reflection, we focused on the following questions: What are the critical components of the position? What authentic interview experiences can we create? Who are the right people to have on the committee? What has to be communicated in advance to the candidates and to the interviewers? What kind of feedback can we give to the candidates during the interviews? What is going to be communicated after the interviews? There are lots of other details to be worked out along the way and 'we didn’t know what we didn't know' before we started. We knew what kind of experience we wanted to create, but didn’t know the questions at the time to ask ourselves or how to create it.
After going through it the first time, we learned a lot and are excited about the process for the future. (Sample) If you think about each of the questions, you will be able to develop an authentic experience for your process that helps you develop a deeper understanding of the strengths and areas of need of each candidate at a much deeper level. You will also know how to support the successful candidates to grow in the areas that you identified as ‘needs’ from the interviews. Finally, you can communicate back to the candidates you didn’t hire and give them valuable feedback for their professional and leadership growth.
We debriefed with our selection team at the end of the morning and there was geniune enthusiasm and excitement about the process. They reflected on what went well and how it could be improved. They thought about the possibility of using this framework with other positions and what would be involved. We learned about each and every candidate....their strengths and areas of growth and can provide them with that feedback. Most importantly, we believe the process helped us identify the candidate most ready for the position. Thanks to everyone on our team for taking a risk and making this happen!
Click here for 'Questions to Consider' when developing your selection process!
Click here for an 'Example of What We Did'.
Over the past couple of years, we have heard, experienced, and experimented with a couple different interview processes for school leaders. We have embedded videos of teachers as part of the interview process and asked candidates to conduct a role-play feedback session with the teacher. We have had them hold a role-play with a parent around a particular parent issue. We have dabbled with giving them a data-set or an authentic email to write, but we stopped at that level. They are time-consuming activities that didn’t apply to each of the members of the panel. All of those took place within a 30 to 40 minute panel style interview during a marathon day of interviewing. Essentially, for 5 candidates we would take approximately 4 hours to interview and then deliberate for another hour. However, after all that time and effort our level of understanding about a candidates skill level or experience in a particular area was limited to a 2 to 4 minute response to a question. The depth of the conversation was limited and candidates could basically ‘interview’ themselves into a position. Sound familiar?
We knew it really wasn’t effective and sort of dreaded the interview process…so we decided to change it. My colleague (Jeff Menzer) and I had some experience working with other organizations (such as Delaware Leadership Project) and found some of their selection processes to be more meaningful and engaging for both the interviewer and the candidate. Some were radically different than the traditional approach. They were using a rotational model of interviewing whereby candidates would be present for a longer amount of time and move from station to station meeting with different groups of people and discussing different topics at a much deeper level. Pretty cool…pretty different...So, after some discussion, we decided to go for it and make it happen in our district!
Here’s what we did...Jeff and I brainstormed the process and what the day would look like. We outlined a process to make it happen. In reflection, we focused on the following questions: What are the critical components of the position? What authentic interview experiences can we create? Who are the right people to have on the committee? What has to be communicated in advance to the candidates and to the interviewers? What kind of feedback can we give to the candidates during the interviews? What is going to be communicated after the interviews? There are lots of other details to be worked out along the way and 'we didn’t know what we didn't know' before we started. We knew what kind of experience we wanted to create, but didn’t know the questions at the time to ask ourselves or how to create it.
After going through it the first time, we learned a lot and are excited about the process for the future. (Sample) If you think about each of the questions, you will be able to develop an authentic experience for your process that helps you develop a deeper understanding of the strengths and areas of need of each candidate at a much deeper level. You will also know how to support the successful candidates to grow in the areas that you identified as ‘needs’ from the interviews. Finally, you can communicate back to the candidates you didn’t hire and give them valuable feedback for their professional and leadership growth.
We debriefed with our selection team at the end of the morning and there was geniune enthusiasm and excitement about the process. They reflected on what went well and how it could be improved. They thought about the possibility of using this framework with other positions and what would be involved. We learned about each and every candidate....their strengths and areas of growth and can provide them with that feedback. Most importantly, we believe the process helped us identify the candidate most ready for the position. Thanks to everyone on our team for taking a risk and making this happen!
Click here for 'Questions to Consider' when developing your selection process!
Click here for an 'Example of What We Did'.