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Dawn Imada Chan
One of the most important responsibilities of school administrators and leadership teams is to recruit and hire the best educators. A significant investment of time up front means the best team for your students and less time and effort on hires who are not the right fit for your school.
An essential consideration before hiring is to determine what skills, abilities, and attitudes your ideal candidate will have. Being very clear about your school mission and how this translates to the classroom will help you determine a profile of your ideal hire. In addition, aligning your interview questions and your rubric or rating system to these identified abilities and attitudes is essential.
Below are some tips and considerations for the hiring process:
The truth is that the best questions, the ones that will help you determine the best hire for your school, are ones that closely align to your school mission and philosophy, the job description, and hiring rubric. They are the ones that elicit stories from your candidate about their experiences and help you to assess if this person would be someone who would help to grow your school.
Some examples of questions might be:
Hiring the best candidate for your school is an investment into student success and achievement. With a collaborative approach, preplanning, and a willingness to break out of some of the traditional hiring practices, you will be ahead of the game in finding your dream team of educators.
Dawn Imada Chan is an education consultant and graduate student in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and a 2012 ASCD Emerging Leader.
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