Strategies to Improve Teacher Hiring: From the Job Ad to Making a Successful Offer

March 24th, 2010 By: Mary C. Clement, Ed.D in Articles, Teacher evaluation, value added assessment, Teachers' Corner

It is critically important to hire the best new teachers for today’s K-12 schools. Highly-qualified teachers engage learners and raise student achievement. They bring fresh ideas to the school. A weak hire not only impacts students learning, but lowers faculty morale and costs an administrator hours of time to remediate or release. Since hiring is such an important process, everyone involved in it needs to know the best hiring strategies.

The first step in hiring is creating an action plan that includes the assignment of tasks. Will the personnel office make the first sort of paperwork? Who will attend job fairs and make the preliminary telephone interviews? Will principals and a team of teachers do the on-site interviews? Those who interview should be trained in their roles, and should be included in writing the job advertisement.

When a position opens, take time to re-envision the new position. Should the new position have the same duties? Is there a better way to group the teacher’s assignments? Once the decisions are made about the requirements of the position, then write the job ad with as much information as possible. If a position involves teaching five remedial language arts classes a day, including three with special education students, that must be listed clearly. Truth in advertising is a must.

When the position advertisement is complete, the interviewers sit down together and write the questions that will be used for all levels of interviews—preliminary and on-site. The well-written ad provides a list of the skills, experiences, and expertise that a candidate needs to possess to succeed in the job. The questions, written in the style of behavior-based questions, will address those skills, experiences, and expertise.

Behavior-based interviewing (BBI) is built on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. Rather than asking a candidate to “tell about yourself,” or asking a hypothetical question, a BBI-style question probes a candidate’s past experience. A candidate who can talk about positive teaching experiences should be able to replicate those experiences when hired. BBI questions begin with prompts such as, “tell me about a time when,” “how have you dealt with,” “what has been your approach to,” and “describe a time when.”

Creating the specific interview questions is done with a formula of taking a prompt, and then adding a skill or experience necessary to do the job. The skills for teaching include knowledge of subject matter, curriculum, methods of teaching, lesson planning, classroom management, parent communication, meeting the needs of diverse students, assessment, and professionalism. For example, “Tell about the classroom routines you have used to get middle school students into your room and started on their work.”
Since job fair interviews and telephone interviews are initial sorts of candidates, four to six questions should be created that select the strongest candidates for on-site interviews. Sample questions include:

1. Tell about the best teaching experience you have had.
2. Describe a successful lesson that you have taught and why it went well.
3. Tell about positive classroom management and how you have implemented it in a classroom.
   Then, add one or two questions that are specific to the job opening.
4. Our current job openings are for middle school positions. Describe your experiences working in a “best practice” middle school classroom.
5. Our current job openings are for elementary teachers who can work with English language learners. Tell about your experiences teaching students who are learning English.

On-site interviews are typically one hour long and require a longer set of questions that address the specifics of the job. Using the behavior-based interview question formula, sample questions include:

1. (Curriculum) Explain how you have implemented a standards based curriculum, breaking the standards into teachable units and lessons.
2. (Methods) What are some of the tried and true ways you have taught ____________ ?
3. (Planning) Describe a lesson plan that has worked well for you in teaching this grade and subject.
4. (Management) Describe a classroom management plan that you have used, including sample rules, positives, and consequences.
5. (Assessment) Besides testing students, what have you done to find out what students know, and have learned, during a class or unit of work?

Continue building the questions for the specific grade or subject level of the job opening.

A key to interviewing is asking the exact same questions, in the same order, to all candidates. Questions must be written out, and interviewers need to have the questions and an evaluation instrument in front of them during the interview. A simple evaluation instrument is to list the categories of unacceptable, acceptable, and target, next to each question. Each interviewer listens to the answer, then rates it with a check mark in the appropriate category, and may add a comment. Be sure to tell candidates that you are taking notes before the interview begins.

The interviewers should be in agreement about what strong answers are before interviewing candidates. Creating a rubric with criteria for answers is another method of evaluation. Making a numeric scale of 1 to 5, where one indicates a weak answer, or no background with the question, and 5 indicates strong answers, can be very useful. It may also help to train employers in the listening skills of PAR and STAR as they evaluate answers. PAR represents Problem, Action, and Result, while STAR abbreviates Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Interviewers can listen to see if the candidate has experience with the problem or situation, and if they understand what to do, and the result of their action.

Behavior-based interviewing, also called the behavioral approach, is not a new one. It has been used in the business world for decades. It can be applied to all facets of interviewing. When an employer receives the applications for the position, he/she should have already created a checklist of skills needed, and should use an evaluation form for each application. From the applications to the final selection of a new hire, this approach uses past behavior to select the best new hires.

The final hiring decision should be based on objective data, not just a gut feeling. When the offer is extended to a candidate, provide a timeline for their decision. Help the new hire to navigate through the hiring paperwork and invite them to new teacher orientation. A teacher’s hiring experience can help with their future retention in the district. The hiring experience should be a planned one that results in a successful new hire.

Tags: hiring, interview