When we interview candidates to teach in our schools, the last thing we want is to make the process easy for them. This isn’t because we like to see people struggle; it’s because we want to recruit great teachers who are going to be a lasting fit for our schools.
Most of the time, employers hire far too quickly. Rushing the process makes it easy to get things wrong and to fall into the trap of hiring someone that you don’t really know. We’d rather take more time to make sure that we get it right the first time around and avoid problems further down the line.
I co-founded Big Picture Learning in 1995 with the aim of putting students directly at the centre of their own learning. There are now 62 Big Picture network schools in the US and many more around the world. We offer advice on teacher recruitment in our dedicated guide (apple.co/2iaaCMV). It is a guide, so every school does it slightly differently, but there are common themes that most of our schools stick to.
The selection process takes a couple of weeks. After reviewing all of the applications, the principal or another senior member of staff will then hold initial telephone interviews with a selected number of applicants.
From these interviews, we narrow the candidates down further to those we will interview in person. There may be an interview with the principal and then we will ask candidates to attend the school for one or two full days, during which time they will teach, work with other members of staff and have every aspect of their teaching observed.
If you think this sounds like an intense process, that’s because it is. It’s intended to help us understand who our candidates really are, in a personal and a professional sense, and to make sure that they understand what our schools are all about, too.
In line with our ethos, we make students an integral part of staff selection. Since they’re the ones who are ultimately going to spend the most time with any teacher that we hire, we think it’s only right that we involve them. The students are generally very hard on the candidates. They ask tough questions - things that adults wouldn’t necessarily ask. They look for people who are like them, in terms of background, race, class and gender. And if a candidate is different, then the students want to know how they deal with people who are not the same as them.
Students want to hear honest answers; they aren’t interested in canned stuff. Seeing a candidate working in their school over a period of a couple of days really gives them a feel for who that person is and whether or not they’re faking it.
Of course, the final decision needs to rest with the school staff and the principal, but the students’ voices are heard loudly and are a big part of the process for us.
Staff recruitment and selection is connected to the entire culture of a school. It’s not just a one-off process. I feel that it’s very important for people to hear and to understand that.
And getting the fit right isn’t only important for the school, it’s important for the candidates, too. If teachers wind up in the wrong school, they won’t be satisfied in their work and will die on the vine because of that. They will eventually end up leaving the school or leaving the profession.
Our hiring process is about so much more than filling in an application and seeing if you’re qualified on paper. It’s highly rigorous and more than a little time-consuming. The way we do things leaves candidates with nowhere to hide, so it says a lot about the people going through it that they’re committed to it.
Of course, we’ve had people pull out in the middle of the process because they decided that the whole thing wasn’t for them - but that just showed that they weren’t for us either.
In hiring new people, there is always risk and chance. But if you get the hiring right, it solves so many problems going forwards. And the process works. Our retention rates are much higher than those of other schools in the same districts. Our staff tend to stay, and stay for long periods. Working in a school like ours is what they really want to do; that’s something that they proved to us at interview.
Ultimately, there is no foolproof method for getting teacher recruitment right, but it’s so important for schools to spend more time on the front end to find people who fit their culture and fit their students from the get-go. Because the alternative is a miserable one, not only for the schools but for the people they hire.
Elliot Washor is co-founder of the US-based education organisation Big Picture Learning
