Aspiring Administrators

minteacher · **Aspiring Administrators** 10-30-2009, 04:21 PM

Have you ever helped your principal conduct interviews for new hires? Did you learn anything? Did you see anything you would do differently? Did he/she do something great that you would take with you?

luv2cook · **interviews** 10-30-2009, 07:04 PM

I'm not an aspiring admin., but the principal and supt. have had me help with interviews several times. One thing I've learned it to keep things really casual so the person lets down his/her guard and lets the real personality shine through. Just let them talk. This really helped us weed out some potential losers for principal who looked really good on paper but would have been a nightmare to work for! It has helped with teacher hires as well.
DO NOT ask, "If you could eat with anyone living or dead who would it be and why?" That really backfired when a teacher had lost her husband a couple of years earlier. A teacher whose husband was an admin. thought it was a great question. I just thought it was dumb and irrelevant!

minteacher · **thanks for your reply** 10-30-2009, 09:56 PM

I appreciate your honesty.

dreamgirl · 10-30-2009, 10:11 PM

I sat in on panel interviews. I really like that process because when someone new is hired, it really effects everyone around. You want to be able to have a voice in who is hired since you have to work with this person. It is really nice to find someone who is a nice fit with the school. It helps me on a personal level because it gives me time to reflect and reevaluate myself and how my teaching is evolving. It also has helped me to prepare for interviews as I have moved on in my career.

senior42 · 10-31-2009, 02:22 PM

We always get the applications and narrow them down to the top 10 then give them to the administrator. In turn he narrows it to 3 and we interview them in depth and recommend them in 1-2-3- order. In all cases he has agreed with our #1 choice. we do this with our associates as well. Our school board used the same procedure for choosing the supt. and principal when they were hired except our choices were confidential and members of the interview team did not know who the others chose so we don't know if our choices were all picked but mine were.