A few weeks ago, I shared a newsletter titled “3 Signs it is Time to Leave Your Current Job” and received some heartbreaking responses, so I wanted to share some ideas on the education interview that might help people start in an organization on the right track.
When I read those responses to the initial newsletter, I felt it deeply. It is tough sharing this, but there are two consistent nightmares that I have.
One is that my technology doesn’t work in front of a massive keynote audience, which is a terrible momentary feeling.
The second is that I am back at a job that felt like it was tearing me apart. That one is a cold-sweat, terrifying dream. So when I read the responses to the email, it made me feel for people who had been in tough work situations, because I know that even if you can find another opportunity, the negative impact of a former job can stick with you.
That said, I have had some great roles in my life, many of which have shaped not only my professional life but also my personal life in very meaningful ways. One teaching job in particular was the reason I am still involved in education today.
From the time I participated in the interview, it was obvious that the process was much different from what I had experienced in the past and was developed to set me up for success.
Weirdly enough, whether I received the job or not. It not only helped me as a teacher, but it also made me rethink the traditional interview process when I became an administrator.
You will often read articles or take webinars on how to prepare for an interview, but we also have to consider how the process is for the candidates. This is an opportunity for the employer and employee to make not only a great impression but also to create a successful partnership. In 2015, I wrote an article on how to rethink the interview process, and I want to share some of those insights below with some updated thinking and editing (Grammarly has helped me tremendously over the years, but I did not use it in the past!).
You can check out the entire post below!
3 Ways to Rethink the Education Interview
Innovation in education should not be limited to what happens in the classrooms, but is also needed for how we lead. We cannot ask people to try different things in their teaching practice, but stick with what we have always done, whether it is beneficial or not, in leadership. If the practice has worked in the past and continues to work today, great! You should keep using it! But everything can be tweaked or revamped to made better, and one of those areas is the interview process.
Are we expecting a different outcome from the hiring process while maintaining what we have done in the past in the interview?
The interview process I participated in as a teacher made little sense. It is wonderful that many organizations are rethinking the process, with some even including students in the hiring group. However, I still wanted to share some insights from my experience as both an administrator and, once, as a teacher being “interviewed” in a way that totally changed my career!
More than ever, it is important to ask yourself when conducting an interview in education: Are you creating an environment where people walk out of the process wanting to work for you?
Here are three ways that we can really create a much better interviewing process, not only in education, but in all areas.
Make the Candidates Feel Comfortable
I remember one interview process where I walked into a giant boardroom with 12 people sitting around a table, and I was at the head of the table by myself. It was one question after another, fired at me, while they took in what I said and wrote notes. I went home after and felt violently ill, and although it seemed coincidental, the process had given me such anxiety that, honestly, I felt there was a correlation to the process and how I felt. It felt more like an interrogation than a conversation.
Another interview I had was the polar opposite of this experience.
The two building administrators invited me in early and gave me 15 topics to discuss during the process. I didn’t have to respond to all fifteen areas, but where I felt I had something to offer. I had about 30 minutes before the process, walked in, and it turned into an hour-long conversation. When it was over, I wondered where the time had gone, and although I had been nervous at the beginning, it felt like a conversation between colleagues and friends. What was interesting about the process was that we all had the chance to get to know each other in a way similar to being in a staff room talking about education, which is what we would experience after the fact.
It also allowed them to identify my strengths. Since they left some openness on the position (middle school teacher), the focus was not on hiring the best grade six teacher, but on hiring the best person and shaping the position around them, rather than the other way around.
If a person is too scared to show their strengths in an interview, you never know what you, as the employer, will lose in the process.
Creating Space for Some Conflict
This point seems to be the opposite of the prior, but you want people to feel comfortable so they can not only challenge your thinking but also see how they react when their own thinking is challenged.
As someone who has interviewed many educators, one important point in this process is how people handle it when someone disagrees with what they are saying.
One of the things I would do in the interview process is slightly challenge people on their answers and get them to dig deeper into why they were saying what they were. There are multiple reasons I would do this.
For one, I wanted to see whether someone went beyond a generic answer and had a deep understanding of what they were sharing.
The other, much more essential, was seeing how they would deal with conflict.
Would they go deeper into their answer, share evidence, and offer a different perspective?
Would they be open to different insights, or would they say what they thought I wanted to hear?
The last part of the prior sentence was a big one for me. Creating a space for challenge is how we all become better. I wanted to know that I was hiring someone who would make all of us better.
How they handled conflict was crucial as well, but again, if you do not make people feel comfortable, they will, of course, tell you what they think you want to hear, not necessarily what they believe.
As I revisit this point years after I wrote the original post, the one thing I would be more explicit and intentional about is sharing at the beginning of the process how much it mattered that we learned and challenged each other to find the best ideas from our work, and to encourage them to push back if I had shared things they did not agree with.
Ensure Every Candidate Leaves Better After the Process
The tough thing about the interview process is that only one person usually gets the job. If that is the case, what happens to the other candidates who go through the process? Did they become better teachers in the process, and did we create a learning experience that would raise the profession as a whole?
After the interview process, I would call each candidate and let them know immediately whether they received the job. I hate it when people withhold an answer that I am dying to know, so I would not do the same to them!
(Side note: I have friends who have told me they not only had interviews with a school district but also multiple meetings, only to be ghosted and find out someone else got the job through a social media post. That is unbelievably disrespectful (if not also cowardly) and will definitely come back to bite you in the future!)
After they learned whether they had received the job (and, unfortunately, most did not), I would ask them whether they were open to some feedback. This is really crucial, even if your intentions are positive. If a person didn’t receive a job they were excited about, the “no” might be too devastating to hear any feedback, which is totally fair. There are times (rare, but they happen) when I am not in the right headspace to get feedback after feeling I lost an opportunity I really wanted, so I get it.
If the candidate were open to feedback, I would share specific components of the process and ask them to look more deeply into some areas I believed could help their career.
There was one particular instance I remember where a candidate who did not receive a job with our school, about a month later, she called me after I gave her insights on the process, telling me that she received another opportunity, and that the feedback she received in our interview set her up to receive that job! She was so grateful for the opportunity to learn from a job she didn’t get, but it was also her willingness to implement that feedback that made the difference.
Even though she wasn’t going to teach at our school, she was likely to teach somewhere.
When you help people find that success, whether with your organization or not, education as a whole wins.
Moving Forward
If you read this post and are about to be interviewed, I cannot promise the insights I shared will be what you experience. Honestly, I hope it’s even better than what I did and experienced.
But if you’re leading the interview process, hopefully this helps you think about it differently.
We always want the best people for the positions in any organization, but you should also create an environment that makes the interview make someone want to work there in the first place.
If they feel that, before they even accept a position, it is a wonderful place to start their next chapter in their professional journey.
If we look at the interview as an opportunity to help someone become a better teacher, whether they get the job or not, we all win.
You also never know who might end up being your boss one day 🙂
