It’s Harder Than Ever to Hire Educators | Don’t Let Weak Systems Make It Worse – Ep 18

🎧 Episode Overview

A great interview does not guarantee a great hire.

In this episode, Courtney and Mario break down one of the most overlooked leadership failures in education: how schools hire the wrong people and why it keeps happening.

Most leaders think the problem is a weak candidate pool.
 But the truth is more uncomfortable:

👉 The problem is the hiring process.

From hiring based on “gut feeling” to mistaking personality for competence, leaders are unintentionally making decisions that cost them:

• Time 
• Team trust 
• Instructional quality 
• And ultimately… student outcomes 

This episode challenges leaders to stop hiring for comfort and start building systems that actually identify the right people.

🔥 Big Ideas from This Episode

💡 1. A Good Interview ≠ A Good Hire

👉 Leaders often fall in love with:

• Personality 
• Chemistry 
• First impressions 

But confuse those with:
✔️ Competence
 ✔️ Cultural alignment
 ✔️ Long-term impact

Result: Bad hires that damage teams and momentum

💡 2. The Real Hiring Problem Isn’t the Pool, It’s the Process

Yes, teacher shortages are real:
👉 1 in 8 positions are unfilled or underqualified
 👉 74% of districts struggle to fill roles

But even with that reality:
👉 Weak systems, not weak candidates cause poor hiring decisions 

💡 3. Hiring on “Feel” Is the Fastest Way to Miss

Truth:
👉 Feelings cloud judgment
👉 Evidence drives results

💡 4. You Must Define What You’re Hiring For

👉 Without clarity, every candidate “feels right”

💡 5. Structured Interviews Predict Performance

Research shows:
👉 Structured, rubric-based interviews are strong predictors of success

💡 6. Stop Asking Questions, Start Requiring Performance

Traditional interviews are shallow.

👉 Don’t ask what they would do
👉 Make them show you

 💡 7. Culture Fit Matters More Than Comfort

The best hire is not:
❌ The most impressive resume
 ❌ The most charismatic candidate

💡 8. Hiring From Within vs Outside Requires Strategy

👉 The key is NOT preference
 👉 The key is evidence-based selection

 💡 9. Passive Hiring Will Fail You

Waiting for applicants is not a strategy.

👉 Great schools don’t wait, they recruit

🧠 Leadership Actions

✅ 1. Build a Hiring Rubric

✅ 2. Add Performance Tasks

✅ 3. Involve Multiple Perspectives

✅ 4. Recruit Actively

✅ 5. Make the Final Decision with Confidence

🎯 Power Quotes

“A good interview is not the same as a good hire.”

“Leaders don’t need to become better judges, they need better hiring systems.”

“When you hire on feeling, you miss what actually matters.”

“It costs far more to fix a bad hire than to take the time to make a good one.”

🎙️ Closing Thought

👉 Hiring isn’t about finding someone you like.
 👉 It’s about building a system that finds the right people every time.

🔗 Connect With Us

📸 Instagram: @edleadership_pair

▶️ YouTube: The EdLeadership Pair

🎥 TikTok: @theedleadershippair

🌐 Website & Newsletter: www.theedleadershippair.com

Join our growing community of school leaders navigating today’s challenges together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Something for all leaders to consider. A good interview is not the same as a good hire. A lot of bad hires don't just happen because there weren't any good candidates. Leaders may go into an interview and they fall in love with comfort or chemistry or first impression. However, they can be mistaking all three for competence and for cultural fit. When that happens, schools don't just lose time, they lose momentum, culture, and even possibly some of their kids. So one week higher doesn't stay isolated. It can affect your teams, your students, your morale, and of course your instruction. I'm Courtney. I'm Mario. And this is the Ed Leadership Pair Podcast. Today we are diving into hiring practices because that's kind of where we are in the year right now. Not that you're not hiring all year long a lot of times in education right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Post-COVID educational system, it's like you're always hiring, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah, but it's an important thing and something that we've been through quite a bit of. And so we just thought we would jump into this.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Yeah, let's talk about hiring. And it is, you know, the hiring season. We're getting close to the end of this school year. Leaders are preparing for next school year. And so what does that mean? It means filling vacancies. And so uh today we want to talk about hiring and we're gonna touch on hiring teachers, we're gonna talk on touch on hiring campus leaders as well, whether that means filling assistant principal jobs, or even if you're a district leader and you're trying to fill principal jobs, we're gonna touch in on all of that here in this episode today. So I think the big question to start us off is that if if one hire can change a campus, then why is it that our hiring practices still feel a lot more like we're looking to choose a conversational partner instead of trying to find the most effective performer, trying to find the most effective educator that is in our candidate pool.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, it seems like a lot of leaders think the biggest hiring problem is the size of the candidate pool. And I don't know that that's necessarily the case. It's a problem, it is an issue, but maybe not the biggest issue. Sometimes the biggest problem in hiring and education is actually the process that people are using to find their teams.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yeah. If anybody's been listening to us all season long, you have figured out that one of the things that Courtney and I believe together at our core is in systems leadership. We have talked so much in almost every episode about creating systems for success, and hiring is just another one of those, and and we might argue one of the most important systems that leaders really got to audit and take into consideration. So, Court, here's what I'd like to do because there are gonna be leaders listening. I travel and I work with schools all over the country, and one of the things that can feel like a hindrance at this point in time is the lack of available educators on the market right now. In other words, our candidate pools are shallow. So, what we're gonna do up front, listeners, is we're gonna give you the truth about where things stand with hiring teachers in the United States right now. And we can all just say, okay, that's an issue, and then we can put that down, and we're not gonna let it be an excuse. We'll recognize that it's a challenge, but like all challenges, our systems are gonna build hurdles right over the top of this challenge. So here we go. What is the data telling us right now? So we begin here. Entering the 24-25 school year in the United States, American public schools reported an average of six teacher vacancies, and unfortunately, only could fill about 80% of them with fully certified teachers. 74% of all school districts reported difficulty filling at least one job in their system. So, what that means is we can acknowledge that there's probably a vacancy sitting open right now when you're when you're listening to this. So 75% of you that are listening in the United States right now, you've got at least one teacher vacancy. All right, that's an acknowledgement. That's tough. That is a challenge, but we're gonna build systems to jump over that challenge. Let's look at another study done in the 25 school year, which estimated that there were about 411,000 teacher positions that were either unfilled or filled by not fully certified teachers in our American system. So that translates to about one in eight teaching positions are either unfilled or filled by not fully certified teachers. So let's just put that up front. All right, everybody listening, we can all kind of uh take a shot of whatever's in your coffee mug. Mine happens to be coffee right now. Courtney's drinking tea. We don't have it, we don't have anything stronger in there. But let's all acknowledge that's tough. So, what we don't want you to do is listen to this episode and think that we didn't weren't living this. Like I hired all the way through the 2022 school year, right? You are hiring today.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Across the across the country, and even now, even globally for you a little bit. So, so what we want you to hear, leaders, is because a lot of times, you know, we get comments in our in our DMs. What do these guys know? What do they know? Like, you know, we we've lived it, we are living it, and so we're acknowledging the hard. The hard is we don't have a ton of teachers just laying out there. But the rest of the episode, we're gonna put that hard down. And let's go to work on building systems that for the people that are interviewing for our jobs, for the candidates that are out there, how do we make sure that we identify the right candidates? What are the systems we can use to tease through our candidate pool to find the best fit for our campuses? Will you please launch us from there?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah, but first, what I'm hearing you saying is our daughter who graduates from college in two years and wants to be an elementary teacher, she's got a good shot at finding a job.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

She's got a pretty good shot.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

She's gonna be self-sufficient, she's gonna get off our insurance, she's gonna be paying her way. Yes, because she will have a job, is what I hear.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Dad is tuning and the crowd goes, wow. No more insurance. Yeah, no, dad's happy about that. Yeah, not only is she gonna have a job, but also because she's your daughter, and so she's gonna be great because you are great, and so she's gonna be great. And so, yes, that's what I'm saying to you is our daughter's got a really good shot of being a teacher as soon as she graduates here in about two years.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

That's right, that's right. So I think jumping into one of the big misses that we talk about all the time, and that was actually a huge shift for us when you hire based off a gut feeling instead of really hiring based on evidence that this is the right person for the job. And so we're talking about like fit and skill and using a rubric for your hiring and the danger of this, oh my God, this person was so cool in the interview and so charming, and you know, all of the things that made it feel like this is such a good fit. How do you prevent that from happening when you are a leader trying to hire and this person just is really endearing themselves to you? How do you make sure that you're hiring for the right things?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Yeah, so I think let's ask leaders some reflective questions then. When I sat down to interview for teachers, you gotta ask yourself, what am I actually hiring for? And what is the order of priority I'm looking for? So am I looking for current skill? Do I just want the best pedagogical teacher right now? Does it matter if they're interested in future growth? If I'm looking for the best person today, then you know who's gonna get left out of that interview? Our daughter. Because she's not gonna be the best person the day she first interviews. But but what about future growth? Does that matter? Are you looking for that? Are you rubriking that out? What about fit to your existing school culture? How many times have we seen a strong teacher who can teach well but doesn't want to teach in the way that fits that particular school's culture? And you end up hiring somebody who sounded great in an interview and may well very well be great, but is not a great fit for that classroom in that particular school. So I think so often leaders confuse the thought of, gosh, I like them. You just said it. That person feels like they'd be a great fit on the third grade team. That person feels like they do well with our uh double block algebra one class. That person feels like they would be a great PLC leader versus what do I know I am seeking to measure in my candidates? And it's not about do I feel like they will fill in the blank, is that I have evidence from this interview process that this person is either high on that particular quality I'm looking for or less high on the particular quality I'm looking for. So many leaders, and Court, you and I, let's give uh credit to where we really got trained well on this was via uh a leadership cohort we were both able to participate in here in the Austin area with Google. And we got to interact with Jamie Cassiop, who we've mentioned in our earlier podcasts. But Jamie Casup was an educational evangelist. That's a great title that they have at Google. Basically, what he did was he supported local schools in the Austin area to prepare leaders and teachers and kids to be ready for the workforce. Anyway, in this leadership training, Jamie Casop taught us about how Google hires. And what he explained to us was everything is about measuring the candidate against the qualities on their rubric. So it's not about um how they feel, it's not about what university the kid went to. Matter of fact, I love that because they said actually the kids from the non-IVs and the non-high performing um colleges, they actually perform a lot better on their rubrics. But anyway, when they sit down to interview, it's not about I'm trying to see who makes me feel good. I'm not looking for a conversational partner, I'm not looking for somebody who who fits my makes my heart happy. They're looking at these are qualities that we are recruiting or we're expecting. And how does this candidate measure up against those qualities? And and the thing is, most leaders have no training, little to no training on how to actually hire well. So, how many leaders have built out rubrics based on qualities that they're gonna go measure and back their whole process up to, right? So I think if we're starting this building a hiring process, you can't start without the end in mind. So, what's the end in mind? The end in mind is here are the qualities, the characteristics, the non-negotiables that we will look for in this job uh in this vacancy. And then we got to rubric that out. What is that supposed to look and sound like in a candidate?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

You know, and I think you brought up um the backgrounds, like looking at resumes of teachers as you're hiring. And I had two experiences as I was a teacher on hiring committees with people that were in the process, and it was fascinating to me because one of the teachers had been um on staff at NASA because I was in the Houston area at the time. And I remember that the principal was so amazed by oh my gosh, she has such great background that she could bring to the classroom and what knowledge. And she actually she worked for NASA, and that was like a whole big thing. And then there was another teacher that I worked with and was on the hiring committee for, and he was had a doctorate in physics, and it was this big amazing thing that he was so brilliant and so smart. And I can't tell you to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

You know where this is, you know where this is going.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I cannot. I have yet to find two people that struggled more to relate to kids and to actually teach them science in a classroom because the kids were like, I don't know what the hell you are saying.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

What the hell are you saying? What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

And they look so impressive on paper, so impressive. And I'm sure they also sounded really great in the interview, but when you actually talked about teaching kids, it was it was so miserably awful. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Yeah, so if in that case, what again, and it's no judgment to some of our past leaders, but this particular I was pretty judgy on that one. I'm gonna be on the buttons was all excited about oh my god, it's NASA and a PhD. Okay, if that's the qualities you're looking for, then that's what you're looking for. But we, I think everybody listening knows that to teach, you gotta know how to teach.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Do you need to know some content? Yeah, but you know what? I'll teach you content. If you don't know content, I'll teach you content. There's other things I need you to know and know to be able to do to be able to get our kids to learn, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Okay, let me ask you this. Do you hire the strongest instructor that you interview, or are you looking to hire the most coachable person who fits your culture and can become eventually elite in your system?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

This may ruffle people wrong. This may be something that people disagree with, but a hundred percent of the time I was trying to hire somebody who was willing to work inside of our culture to meet our ends for our kids, and ultimately somebody that was willing to grow with us. I would take somebody who's willing to grow with us inside of our culture a hundred times out of a hundred over somebody who's a better instructor than that particular candidate, but who is unwilling to grow into our culture to support our kids. In other words, you know who I ended up hiring a lot? A lot of young teachers, a lot of young teachers fresh out of school. And people used to make fun of me. Why are you getting all the young kids? You know why? Because they're willing to come in here and do what we gotta do for our kids. Now, this is not universal. I did hire a lot of veterans, but a lot of veterans come in and think, I know what I'm doing. I'm gonna do it my way, regardless of what you say. You know what? You may be a good instructor, you are not a fit for my campus.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Um I I might disagree with you on that one a little bit. A little bit. Um, and I don't think the question is saying either you're coachable or not coachable, it's just which one's more important. And just because you're veteran doesn't mean you're not coachable. Agreed.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

I know you didn't say that. We clarify that. So I don't want all you veterans out there being like, attack him, go, go, go. No, get out of my TikTok DMs. I didn't mean it like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

No, but what I will say is I think it's important to look at your team. Like if we're talking about science teachers and you've got a team of science teachers, if they are all brand new, it might be good and valuable to bring in some veteran blood. Okay. To bring in some people with experience, to bring in some people with knowledge, and that they are maybe already aligned with your instructional framework or whatever that is. But I think there are situations where you do need a little bit more of a veteran voice and you have to consider what are the needs of my campus and the team that this person is joining. If, if, and if all you have are veteran voices, absolutely bring in somebody that is new and coachable, and maybe even someone that's not totally new, but maybe needs to challenge your veteran voices. Sometimes that's what you're looking for. But really, that's where it comes down to creating a rubric that defines out what we are looking for in this particular position. Yes. What do we need to fill this role? And the English four position that you hire may look really different than the biology ninth grade position that you hire.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

And now you've won me over because I'm with you a thousand.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Boom. Where's your little button for you wanna pray? All right, let's do that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

So yeah, okay. Well, you've got to do this, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Like, I knew he would say coaching.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

I agree in that. No, it's this. We are saying the point we're making here in this first segment is you can't hire off of feel, you've, and you can't even just hire off of fit. You have to hire off of what are we looking for in the qualities of this position. So, in the case you described, where I've got a team or a school that is all young teachers or a team that then hell yeah, I need to find me a veteran. But, but I want to find a veteran who is still willing to grow into our culture. So now it's not a single point rubric. I think that's maybe where we could come together on this is the rubric we're gonna build has to be multi-qualitied. Yeah, some instructional skill. Don't get me wrong, all these young teachers I hired right out of college, they had instructional skill. I wasn't hiring people who had their heads up their rear ends, right? At the same time, though, what I was looking for was hey, are you willing to grow into our culture? Listen, I want to say this to make sure everybody I believe in veteran leadership. And listeners, if you haven't gone back to uh listen to the episode on supporting veteran teachers, this will make sense to you. Is there's different types of teachers and they interact with your culture in different ways. So, yes, when you're hiring and creating your rubrics of the qualities you're looking for, you should be paying attention to what kind of team do I have? Are they a scouty team? Are they a sentinel-y team? Are they a sprouty team so that I can profile? Are they a little bit of a sprouty team? Yeah, you gotta know that. That's important so that you know how to profile that particular vacancy.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

I like it.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Court, what we're saying here to close this section out is that the trap for leaders is the worst tires that end up getting made is not really because somebody looked terrible in the interview. Usually what happens is something felt right and your feelings pushed you in a direction that clouded the other things you were looking for. Right. Right. So sometimes, like, oh, that felt that person feels right, and you missed what it is you could have really been looking for, right? So I just want to make sure that our leaders listening understand that in the research, there's a research body called selection research, which has found that structured interviews, meaning these interviews that are structured around rubriking out qualities you're looking for, they remain one of the strongest predictors of job performance. Um matter of fact, there's meta-analysis that prove that the more structured the interview was around uh qualitative rubricing out of like of the characteristics you're looking for, they actually have a long, longitudinal prediction of job performance. So listen, this matters because we always learned that hiring is one of the most um efficient ways to impact your organization. Hire well and fire well. Right, hire well, but if you hire well, you don't have to fire so much. And that's what this is saying is if you hire in a structured manner and take the feeling out and you build it around qualities and characteristics, then it is a longitudinal predictor of people performing well inside of your uh organization.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Nice. Okay, so what let's say we're looking to hire for a teacher position and knowing that a lot of times just a pure interview with questions and answers, it's gonna be too shallow. It's not gonna give you the full breadth of data that you need to make a decision and have the evidence in front of you to say whether or not this person is the best person for the role. So talk to me about what you can do to add some depth to your interview process. Yeah or your hiring process, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, so often the hiring process, and again, I want to say this to everyone listening: we are not trained well on how to interview and hire people, right? It's not part of we're we're trained as instructional leaders, you know, those kinds of things. But then you end up having to be a basically a mini CEO when you're hiring. And I don't care if you're an elementary principal, middle school principal, high school principal, district leader, these are jobs that these are these are job functions that CEOs get trained on. And yet in school systems, it's like, oh, here you go, manage a budget, uh, hire people, be an HR department, uh, you know what I mean, and be an instructional leader and and and manage culture. You're like, God dang. Um the people at at uh at in Disney get paid eight figures to do that, but yet I gotta do that all at in one person, um, you know, in my school system. So, in fairness to everybody listening, that's what we're trying to help you with is we're not trying to say what you do sucks. We're just trying to warn you that it's potentially shallow. So just having people answer questions is like asking them to regurgitate the job description to you. Because how do we build those questions? We build those questions based on what does a teacher do? What does a math teacher do? How what do it's basically just tell me what you think of the job description back in examples, right? And it's such a shallow way to try and measure if this candidate matches our qualities and characteristics we're looking for in our in our um hiring process. So what we gotta do is start to create interview systems that require the candidates to show us how they will do this job, not have them tell us, but show us what it will look like. So I think it's creating performance opportunities within job uh interview processes that become really important. So I don't know if you guys, I know you do a lot of hiring today. So can you share with the listeners what are some really good ways to instead of just ask interview questions, what are we seeing in trying to hire, let's say, with great teachers, how can you draw that out so you can they can show you better?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah. So I definitely think you've talked about, you know, kind of task-oriented things, giving them an inbox activity where you give them some kind of assignment of what you want them to do and demonstrate when they come to you at the interview. So they get it maybe, you know, two business days in advance, and then they're coming to you with their best effort, and then they actually perform a small part of a lesson, or they, you know, are showing they're describing what that would be, whatever it is. But there's like an inbox activity. Um, there is you can ask them for performance evidence if you want to, and have them share with you how their work. Has impacted students and what what is the data that backs that up? You can have them, like I said, demo lessons. They can bring in work samples, they can bring in portfolios of stuff that they have done. Um, and one thing I know you and I both love doing, and maybe I don't know, maybe it's just selfish because we want to hang out with the kids, but maybe involving students in the interview process is really such a cool thing. And it's hard to do with teachers because you hire it such a clip that bringing in kids to do that. But I would say definitely your assistant principals or your school leaders, having a student's perspective is so cool. And having them talk about where they see this person on the rubric in these different areas and having something of how they interact with students and how they respond or don't respond to students in the interviews. And I have I've had a kid in an interview before, and the person interviewing never once even really acknowledged the kid. And I'm like, why are you trying to work in schools? Like you're not even you're not even gonna pretend like this is an important voice in this interview. Like it's important enough that I pulled this kid from whatever they were doing with their time to be in this interview, and you're gonna just ignore them. Yeah, it was not good. But anyway, I think those are some of the things that you can do in that agreed to add some depth.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Let me summarize what I heard you say is in an interview, let's start with teachers. In a teacher interview, it is far less important what answers they can throw at you off the cuff. Because I don't need to know that this person can answer things quickly. What I want to see is how do they do their job day to day when they have time to prep and plan and know what's coming and know their kids and know our culture? I'm not looking for them to be fast answers.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Yeah, I want to know your version of best.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Right. What what do I care if you can answer this fast? That what what when is ever in teaching? Like, oh my God, somebody asked me a question, I gotta know the answer right this second. That's not teaching. Teaching is about planning and knowing kids and setting up good environments. How do I relate with uh kids? How do I relate with colleagues? That's what I wanted to see in a teacher. So just by asking questions, I didn't get any of that. So you know what we used to do? Like you, we'd have them come in and teach a model lesson. They would teach a about a 10 to 15 minute segment of a lesson. We sent that out way in advance. We didn't want, we wanted your dog and pony. In other words, show us your best because you know what we knew? If your best sucked, then we certainly don't want to see anything you got other than that. Yeah, right? So, yeah, I want to see your best. And then we used to ask them to bring artifacts of their planning. I want to see how you plan. What are you thinking about when you plan? How do you help kids who need more support than the regular kids? Show us that. Don't tell us, show us how you are doing that. And if you're a brand new teacher, we would say, I don't care. Show us how you might do that. You're not excused from this. Bring artifacts of how you might do that, right? On top of that, we would show them a video recording of one of our collaborative teams. In other words, we would show them teachers at our school collaborating. And then we would ask them, what would you lend to that conversation? What would you, where would you struggle to jump into that conversation? How does our team align with your vision of how teams should look and how support? So we put them as close as we could in a in a collaborative environment. We wanted to see how they felt about collaboration and what they would add to our collaborative teams. So just a few examples of with teachers. It doesn't have to be, hey, answer five, six questions and tell us what you think about teaching. Gosh, anybody can just uh come up with the right words and say the right jargon. No, we wanted to see it.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

What do you say to someone that says, that's way too long of an interview? I don't have that kind of time to put a teacher in an interview for like that.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

Here's what I would say. It costs you exponentially more time and effort to get rid of a bad teacher than it does to take the time to hire a good teacher. And how many children's lives are gonna be negatively impacted because you can't take the time to build a meaningful process? And I know that sounds direct to leaders who are listening, but I'm challenging you all directly. Hiring well is so important because our kids' lives are dependent on it. And think of yourself if you want to be selfish. How many of our colleagues or us are gonna have to spend time and energy covering down for and trying to get rid of an ineffective educator? Just get it right on the front end. Take the darn time to get it right on the front end and court. Here's the thing: we did this for years. It didn't take that much longer, to be honest with you. You build this as a system. You already know your video you're using, you already know the model lesson you're using. It's all set up. You repeat it, right? You build it, you rinse, you repeat. It's not like you have to, uh it's it's really not that hard, right? So forgive me, but that's a little bit more excusey. Oh, I don't have time for that. No, you don't want to make time for that, which means you're gonna miss on hiring.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

And then you're gonna spend a lot of time and effort trying to get rid of them later if they're not the fit you thought they were.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Yeah, yeah. And and just to also tell leaders when you're hiring for assistant principals or principals, not just kids' voice, parents' voice. Oh, yeah. Parents and kids saw things in my assistant principal interviews that we didn't see. I had teacher leaders in there, I had I had my other assistant principals with me. I had, but the kid and the parent would tell us stuff like, mm-mm, this was this this person made me feel like that. Or when they said that, this is what that's gonna look like in an in from my point of view. And we'd have to be like, wow, we would have missed that all together. So I agree with you, not only kids' voices, but bringing in the right parent. Now, it's gotta be the right parent voices. You don't need a cuckoo person in there with you. It's gotta be a parent that you know is helping you build your vision and match your culture, because we know some parents aren't in line with that. So it's gotta be the right parent or set of parents that are in there to help you tease out fit for your culture and fit for what they want for their kids as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Yep. One thing I would add to that, especially if you are bringing in teachers, parents, students into this hiring process, in order to do that, you do leaders have to stack the deck a little bit. And by that, I mean you are vetting candidates. I'm not talking about teachers. Now I'm talking about hiring for leaders. I am saying that you have to get an idea of who you would be okay with and who you would not be okay with before you send them off to parents, teachers, and students. That way, when they come out of that interview and they say, Here's our top two or three, that you would be okay with any of those top two or three people. So you're not gonna send them people that you know they're gonna say no to you or that you are hopeful they will say no to. You have to kind of stack the deck and have them be later on in the interview process. You've already vetted the people that you know are not gonna be a fit and know that whoever you send to them, because they could come out of there with, oh my God, we love this person. And what if that wasn't your top choice? But the data and evidence that you've collected at the end of this interview says that's the right fit. So you have to be really strategic about when you involve them and when you don't involve them in that process of hiring leaders for your campus or your district.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yeah, Courtney, thank you for making that point and reminding us again when we learned from Google. That's what the executives at Google taught us was early in the paper screening, maybe if you do some sort of higher view where you send like a video interview for a lot of people, early on, the final decision-making leader has to be heavily involved in filling the candidate pool. So don't put anybody in your pool that you're not gonna be generally okay with. So you're absolutely right. The leader, the top-level leader who's the decision maker, has to be involved very, very early. Then in the middle, you get a lot of eyes on those candidates, colleagues, students, parents. Let's not forget our counselors. We used to involve our counselors in teacher hires too, and for sure in admin hires, because who works closely with teachers or counselors, they have a whole nother angle. So put your counselors in there. Put an office staff member in there, a registrar, a receptionist. The more eyes you can get on this candidate pool, the better. Then at the end, leaders, and let's close this section really emphatically the decision maker, whichever leader it is, you gotta make the final call. In the end, your candidate pool gave you two choices. Maybe they preferred one. If that's not the right one in your bones, you gotta be strong enough to say, but this is the person I know is the right person for us. Because when you're that top of the spear leader, the end of the branch leader we always talk about, it's yours to own, man. So you've done a lot of input, you've set the pool right, you've gotten a lot of processes in place and you got a lot of thoughts. Now you got to make that final call because ultimately, in the end, if that candidate turns out to be a bad hire, guess who's gotta own it? Just you. So that's an important lesson. You go through all of this. The end of this hiring system has to end with the leader making the decision that is right for that particular vacancy.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

All right. So then let's jump into talking about the consideration for internal versus external hires because this is something I remember. So we are kind of on the border of two different school districts where we live, and our kids go to one and we have worked in the other. And so we have friends in both. But one of the school districts told us when we were early leaders that it was actually very valuable to actually leave the district, and they loved it when people came back from other districts because it would bring new experiences and new strategies and new things that they didn't already have. And it, they're both large districts, but they valued that. The other district is notorious for hiring from within. And I'm talking mainly about their leadership positions, talking about their assistant principals, principals, and their district leadership. They are like almost you could make a meme. I don't know what it would be, but like they're the picture of we hire from within. And um I think there's a time and place for both, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yes. And I would go back to then this first section is hiring within, what it's gonna do is it's gonna give you the potential to accelerate your cultural fit because the person who's within, if they're quality candidate, they're already a good fit for your culture. And you've seen that over time. That's the benefit we have with an internal hire, is you've been they've been interviewing constantly the whole time that they've been with you. So when it comes to that question of do they fit us, do they know us, do they know our work, they have that advantage. I think hiring from within is always okay as long as you are still being evidence-based, as long as you still have your characteristics and qualities, they're still rubriced out. And if this internal person hits all the boxes, then yeah, why not? It's just it's a bonus because they already know you, they know your place. But if somebody from the outside hits more boxes and checks more off the off of what you're looking for, then you can't just be biased to the internal person. And those are hard conversations. You and I have both had to pass over people from inside. And that's but Court, this is where it makes it a lot easier because now I don't have to say to this person that I passed over that it was personal. I can show them, hey, it's just that you're not quite there in this area, and I'm gonna help you. I will help you get there. But this time, this is where you can continue to strengthen what we see. That's why having an evidence-based interview process, it helps in so many ways.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Yeah, I oh one of the hardest conversations was a good friend of mine applied for a job on our assistant principal team. And while she wasn't the right fit for my team, I had to have that conversation with her. And that's tough. And that that is real rough.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

But yeah, and what ended up happening tell them, tell them what happened to that one person.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

What ended up happening is she was a really good fit for someone else's team.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

And yeah, that was me.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Yeah. Homeboy ended up hiring her, and she was perfect. Perfect fit for perfect for what you needed in so many ways. The skills and abilities that she brought to your team, they not that they would have been wasted at my school, but my school didn't need that in that time.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

In that moment. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

That's not what we needed and you did.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah, and it went on to serve her. Well, she's now a sitting principal. So like the path worked.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

So one of the best things I think you can do, obviously, is if you are building that pipeline from within, then making sure that you have those opportunities for people that you're considering. Like if you're looking at people to hire for assistant principal roles, have you built an internship program where you can have teachers that are interested in that come in and do some of those projects that are at a higher level and trust them with some things and see how they handle it?

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Well, let me ask you this question then. Like, so when is hiring from within smart? And when is it just lazy?

SPEAKER_00 35:03

I think it's that idea that we talked about earlier of knowing your needs and knowing is it time to bring in some new blood? Because we need, we need scouts and we need some sprouts, like we need new to try to shake things up a little bit. I think that's when you start looking at having a focus on not hiring from within. Or if within you don't have the pool that you need. Like you didn't, you didn't do a good job building your bench, or you just got there and your bench isn't built of the culture that you're trying to continue on. Um, I think that's a big part of it.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

I agree. But I would close this out by saying I think hiring from within is always okay as long as you are still being evidence-based, as long as you still have your characteristics and qualities, they're still rubriced out. And if this internal person hits all the boxes, then yeah, why not?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah, and I do want to jump into before we head out, because I think this was something that you were really good about. And that is active recruitment of teachers, especially. And so, can you talk a little bit about the ways that you avoided just this passive, I get whoever applies kind of mentality? And you really did jump into some active recruiting processes that I was like, oh man, that's a really good idea. I'm kind of upset I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Well, so here's a couple of things. You were already moved on to the central office when I got really good at this because you know when this started, it came out of necessity from the year 2020 forward. I had to I had to recruit differently. Before 2020, we had 65 applicants in a teacher pool. So yeah, we were gonna find somebody good in there. From 2020 on, we have not had that type of depth. And we said at the beginning of the show, the teacher shortage is real, but you want to know what else is real too? Is leaders sitting around passively recruiting or an absence of recruiting at all? And that's just not the leader I was ever gonna be. If there's a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Oh, yeah, you're like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

You did not do that.

SPEAKER_02 37:07

Little vanilla ice for you there. But listen, this is what this is what that looked like. Take it back. No, I can't take it back. If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

You don't have to say it twice.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

All right. But here's what that looked like. So this may not apply for every single leader. This may not work for you, and I'm sure there's gonna be people that say, Oh, I can't do that. So you'll have to think of how you can do something like this in your environment. But here's what it looked like for me. I went around and made really strong connections with professors at the universities closest to us. Now, I happen to be an adjunct myself, and so maybe I had some luck in that. But and you and I went through programs, grad programs ourselves. But just pick up the phone or go uh attend events with universities. The universities are trying to place their kids too. So I made a lot of connections with a lot of university professors, and every semester, about midway through, I was already on the phone with the professors. Hey, I'm gonna have this kind of vacancy. I think I'm gonna have this, I'm gonna have that. Who do you have that's great? Um, and and they would send me their great kids, their great teachers. On top of that, we were a massive student teacher magnet. I wanted now carefully, because sometimes those shadow teachers we talk about, the shadow teachers that are not good teachers, they want student teachers, so they don't have to do their job. So at my school, if you were a shadow teacher, you weren't allowed to have a student teacher. But if you were a good sentinel or a good scout, I wanted you to have a student teacher. I wanted you growing other teachers because a lot of our higher score, they came right out of student teachers from our own buildings. So literally via university connections, via student teaching, via connections with um the New Teacher Project or um Texas, like in our state, there's uh Texas teachers. So there's all these alternative cert programs. Call those people who run those programs and make a make a relationship with them. Hey, who do you got coming up? Let me have them come do a model lesson on campus. You know, those teachers who are coming through alternative cert still have to do some practice lessons somewhere. Open your campus up to that so you can see it. You're like, oh, there we go. And I'm gonna I'm gonna go recruit that person right now. Hey, you did a great job for 40 minutes with my kids. Here, we want you. We want you. Don't take any other interviews. You want this job, it's yours. You know what I'm saying? So there is this excuse that can be there that, oh my gosh, there's not a lot of teachers out there. So then, damn, you better compete for the ones that are out there. You better get active in recruiting universities, alternative certification programs, student teaching opportunities. How about this? I used to ask my teachers, who in your teacher network do you think would be a good fit for us? Call your friends. Call your friends, teachers, no teachers. Yes, yes, we are in a teacher shortage, but you can either sit there and cry about it, or you can make connections and get active in recruiting teachers that are out there and draw the best to your campus.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Right. You can't just wait for HR to recruit for you and for your needs for your campus. And one of the cutest things, I don't know, I can't remember if you were there, but our son was talking about one of his club sponsors, and they realized he's at a different school where you were principal, but they realized that this teacher who is a world language teacher at his school, but runs this club that our son is in, um, had been a student teacher at your campus. And he was like, Oh, that's your dad.

unknown 40:28

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Super cute, super cute. But what better way than having student teachers on your campus to induct them into your expectations for the culture, for the instructional programming that you expect. I mean, the it just that's such a great idea to have them student teach there because then they know and they can even self-select out if they know this is not my fit.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Or they can say, absolutely, I want to work here, and then they can tell you why in an interview they specifically want to work at your school because they've lived it.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

You know, we even were active in recruiting our hourly positions. That's another thing that's hard to hire today. Yeah. Your office staff, or maybe your bus drivers, or maybe your cafeteria staff. So, you know what we started doing? And now you got to check this with HR because I did get slapped around at first until HR woke up and came along. But we were posting on our next doors, our neighborhood next doors, on our neighborhood Facebook pages, because most of your hourly people, they're from your neighborhood. They want to work somewhere close to where they live. So I started recruiting in the neighborhood. We'd go to put churches, church flyers up and all that stuff for my hourly vacancies because I'm like, look, I'm gonna recruit my neighborhood. Now, again, HR was a little slow on the uptake with that, like, oh Mario, you can't out-recruit us. I said, then get going and let's start figuring out alternative ways for recruiting. So be careful, leaders, because you know, Courtney and I have talked about we were willing to push the envelope. Maybe you're listening and you're like, that's more envelope than you're willing to push, which is okay. That doesn't, that doesn't mean a bad thing, but just ideas. Actively recruit, don't let recruitment be passive. And in defense of your HR department, they're trying to help recruit for an entire district. Plus, they have other HR functions, right? They run a school district. So give them a break and say, look, I'm gonna also become an active recruiter as a campus leader for my campus.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah. And it's not that you had better luck, it's that you had a better pipeline. You had built these pipelines, you had built these opportunities for recruitment. And so those are just ideas that I felt like it was really important to share with other people and for you not to hoard them away in your brain over there.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

It's not that I'm hoarding them, it's that my brain is just really small. And so there's not a lot, I can't pull a lot out of there.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

I mean, if it's in there, we're glad we got that out so you can make room for other things.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

Thank you. Yeah, I can dump that one out now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

All right. Well, so let's just kind of let's just kind of close this episode then. Like if leaders want to hire better, then I think this is what we're after, is they just they need a better process. So we want to think about sort of maybe these four big parts of the process. Is number one, can this particular interview candidate do the work? In other words, do they meet the quality of the characteristics we're looking for? Second, can they grow into our environment? In other words, yeah, you might bring this, but you're gonna have to meet our kids' needs and our campus's needs and our staff needs. So can you grow in the work we have? And are you coachable? That's right. Are you coachable in that work? Do you add strength to our culture? You talked about are you the right person for the right position at the right time? So whether you're a veteran with a younger team or a younger person with a veteran team or a scout with a sprout team or a sprout with a scout team, right? Do you add value to our culture? That's the next or the third thing I would offer that they can be looking at. And then ultimately this all has to be evidence based. Can you prove it? Not do I feel like they can. Can I prove that this candidate has the skills, has the growth orientation, and has the cultural fit to be the right hire? That's how you build a system.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

Yeah. Most leaders don't need to become a better. Better judge of their candidates. They need to be better designers of the hiring process.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Yeah. What a great end to the episode. So, leaders, please make sure you're following us on our social media platforms on TikTok, Instagram, and our YouTube channel. Also, a lot of this content we talk about hiring rubrics and things. Know that if you'll subscribe to our newsletter, we share out these resources that Courtney and I have from our practice. So if you'd like access to deeper content, please make sure you're subscribing at www.theedleadershippair.com. Well, hey, tonight we didn't do alcohol, but we did coffee and caffeine and tea and caffeine. So great episode. And that I might have had too much caffeine. That's why I was a little bit worked up.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

So you take it a little jealousy.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

A little worked up. So good episode, though. I appreciate uh you listeners taking the time. We're gonna go ahead and sign out. Um audio.

SPEAKER_00 44:51

I'm Courtney, and this is the Ed Leadership Pair Podcast. Thanks for listening.