For many school leaders, the worst of hiring season is behind us for the year, which makes this a good time to pause and reflect on how the process shapes our learning institutions.
In many ways, the interview process is a microcosm of K–12 education itself: an attempt to gather a mountain of information in the shortest possible window. Driven by rigid scheduling, educators are forced into a high-stakes sprint, leaving little breathing room to process what has just occurred.
However, we cannot let the reality of time constraints compromise the quality of our gatekeeping. To build exceptional teams, we need to break apart the mechanics of the process. By examining the smaller components, we can help transform a rushed logistical hurdle into a precision instrument for school success.
In this biweekly column, principals and other authorities on school leadership—including researchers, education professors, district administrators, and assistant principals—offer timely and timeless advice for their peers.
In our own schools, we have found that a strong hiring process prioritizes quality over quantity and authentic performance over rehearsed answers.
Manage interview volume
One often-overlooked aspect of the hiring process is the number of candidate interviews scheduled in a single day. While staffing timelines and logistical realities sometimes require a compressed schedule, interview teams should recognize that their ability to evaluate candidates objectively diminishes as the day progresses. Fatigue, decision overload, and declining concentration can cause interviewers to focus less on what a candidate is saying. As a result, candidates scheduled later in the day may be at a disadvantage.
For most interview teams, limiting the schedule to two or three interviews in the morning, followed by a break and a similar number in the afternoon, helps maintain consistency. Even then, organizations should consider whether six interviews in a day are too many for meaningful evaluation.
Consider:
- At what point during a day of interviews does the quality of your attention and decisionmaking begin to decline, and how might that affect the candidates you are evaluating?
- How could your hiring process incorporate more authentic demonstrations of practice to reduce reliance on lengthy interview rounds and better assess candidate effectiveness?
Design meaningful interview questions
When we sit down to craft or revise our interview banks, we must ask ourselves: Are we hiring for true collaboration or are we simply looking for compliance? Too often, committees waste precious time testing candidates on technical knowledge that can easily be developed through onboarding. Does it matter if an applicant knows the exact nuances of your district’s current English/language arts curriculum or the quirks of your student-data system?
Instead, we need to balance instructional baseline knowledge with a deep dive into the candidate’s disposition as a learner. Candidates who understand the importance of collaboration are educators who can engage with feedback. Therefore, we should prioritize questions that reveal inherent qualities: “Can you share a time you received critical feedback from a supervisor or peer, and how did that shape your subsequent practice?”
The answer to this question tells you far more about how a teacher will navigate the daily collaborative realities of your building than any memorized acronym ever could.
To ensure your questions reflect the actual needs of your building rather than an administrative vacuum, look to the broader school community. Honor the expertise of your staff by soliciting their input before the hiring season begins. Ask your current teachers what specific traits and dispositions they value in a colleague and use that feedback to anchor your interview structure.
Once your draft is complete, label every question by standard, domain, or core value. This visual map quickly exposes redundancies and highlights blind spots, ensuring that every question earns its place on the page.
Finally, challenge the traditional interviewing process. Providing interview questions to candidates ahead of time might yield deeper, more substantive answers rather than simply rewarding the fastest talker. Better yet, flip the traditional hiring sequence entirely by placing the demonstration lesson before the formal committee interview. This allows you to eliminate hypothetical questions altogether and spend your interview time asking candidates to critically reflect on the live teaching segment you have all just witnessed.
Consider:
- What qualities are we looking for in our next hire?
- Do we have questions that will help us determine whether the candidate embodies those qualities?
- What shifts can we make to elicit authentic answers from our candidates?
Structure the hiring process
Determining the right number of interview rounds is a delicate balancing act between respecting your committee’s time and exercising due diligence on behalf of your district. Too many rounds can lead to applicant and committee burnout and the loss of strong candidates in a competitive market. Too few can result in a costly hiring mistake. A strategic process allows you to systematically narrow the field while ensuring that each round serves a distinct, data-driven purpose.
When managing a large pool of applicants, consider a screening round as the first phase. Rather than diving immediately into deep instructional pedagogy or administrative minutiae, this conversation should focus primarily on who the candidate is as a person and an educator. Use this time to gauge their core values, alignment with your school’s mission, and fundamental view of students.
Candidates who perform well during the screening progress directly to a performance-based assessment. No matter how polished a candidate may be in a sit-down interview, you cannot truly know how they will function until you see them in action. Placing the demonstration lesson or entry-plan presentation at this stage strips away rehearsed answers and provides an immediate, authentic glimpse into classroom management, responsiveness to students, or strategic vision before any formal committee questions are asked.
Demonstration lessons followed by reflective conversations and pedagogical discussions provide a more accurate picture of a candidate’s skills while reducing reliance on lengthy interview panels. Observing candidates interact with students, reflect on their instructional decisions, and navigate real classroom situations often yields richer information than additional rounds of questioning.
This sets up a powerful final stage: the larger stakeholder committee round. By assembling a diverse committee—including grade-level or department peers, support staff, and administrators—you give key personnel a meaningful voice in the process. Committee members can then ask targeted questions connected to what matters most to them, directly challenging candidates to critically reflect on the live performance they have all observed.
Consider:
- How much time do you have to devote to hiring for this position? Are there scheduling limitations that may help guide the length or timing of the process?
- What do you want to learn about candidates at each stage?
- Is a series of demonstration lessons possible? If not, can candidates walk through their lesson plans and engage in a question-and-answer session?
