The Crucial Importance of Good Hiring Practices

Schools are all about people - a few words on how to make the most of reference checks

I just returned from a trip to London. I was surprised to find that London felt less haunted post pandemic than New York City did when I was there a week before I left. This was surprising to me because the UK’s lockdowns were in many ways more Draconian than anything we experienced here. Some businesses have vanished but they are replaced with new ones; train stations are as bustling and cacophonous as ever, restaurants packed. The plays I attended had full audiences. Very few masks. Pubs are now brimming with craft brews alongside the usual suspects. Very little cash was changing hands. And even at a place like Borough Market with its cavalcade of tempting food stalls, signs were everywhere, “NO CASH. CARD ONLY.” Very 21st century.

I used to come to London annually to visit my niece and her husband and would generally spend my weekdays wandering the city, people watching and soaking in this multilayered place, getting that distance that can be so helpful as I mused on leading people and educating kids as to how to move through this rapidly changing world and be solid human beings embracing their full humanity. 

We are all infinite in our capacity and specific in our unique abilities. It is perhaps a cliche, and a cliche because it is true, that then hiring is one of the most important things we do in schools. We are in the people business, which is why I found a home in this industry. “Tired of London; tired of life” well, “Tired of schools; tired of life.” Not everyone who works in a school is powered by a desire for personal growth - and that is not even something I am advocating or wishing for, as it is also simply a pleasant and meaningful way to make a living - but the number of people who are has certainly been a delight to me in the past 25 years.

And because now we are in a never ending hiring cycle in schools, I’ve been contacted a few times recently as a reference. This made me reflect on hiring, and more specifically, the role of reference checking in identifying those candidates that can move our missions forward and contribute their own magic to the school’s.

Much like the admissions process, the hiring process is a leaky bucket, as flaw-filled as the humans who operate it. There are limitations presented by all the other demands on the list that require an administrator’s attention, and trying to get outside of our own heads to determine what might be our biases. We need to connect enough with our colleagues to have common cause and congeniality and to have enough effective communication that we can move our programs forward. However, we are also not interviewing people to marry. We also don’t want to work in echo chambers. That is bad for us and bad for the kids. 

How do you thread this needle?  

There are many answers to this question in terms of the recruitment and interview process and I have seen what are considered best practices evolve from when I started in 1996. I was initially hired into a school in both the best and worst of ways - a midyear, desperation hire where the main criteria had been that the Dean of Students and I formed a very quick bond in the interview, so it felt like the magic of serendipity and perhaps the hand of fate. But this is not a functional system. Now, schools bring a much greater sophistication and intentionality to recruiting, developing interview questions and interview feedback for the internal community, being more aware of our own implicit biases, getting clearer on what we need to serve the students when we are filling a position and how to evaluate this in a resume, letter and screening interviews. 

However, it has been a perennial surprise to me that most people seem to consider the reference check part of the process the last stop and a formality. And to be sure, there are plenty of very appropriate legal boundaries - to name two, for supervisors to “pass the trash” from one school to another, or for an employer to get salary history to gauge their final offer.

But it is a huge opportunity for the hiring administrator to really consider how the role the new hire will fill squares with the school’s strategic direction and values.

Have you ever been on a reference check where it feels like the person on the other end is checking a few boxes and it would really be best if you kept it short and simple? I have been on a lot of those.

By far the best reference check I have ever been on the receiving end of was one where the first question, and really only question, the supervisor had was, and I am paraphrasing, “We are moving from a faculty centered culture to a student centered culture. Could you give some specific examples of how the candidate would positively contribute to this culture shift?”

There is no fudging that one. We ended up having a nuanced and informed discussion that went way beyond the usual, “Strengths - passion for their subject area, Weaknesses - works too much” and was a conversation completely about professional practice. Hats off to that administrator.

You want a school community to reflect the world, to give the students different perspectives and styles of being in the world. You want highly qualified people who are bringing lots of skills to the table. You also want some people lower on the experience scale who are bringing fresh energy. 

But sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes despite everyone’s best efforts, there’s too big a gulf between the style of a new hire and the way the culture is used to operating for everyone to work well together for longer than a few years. Then there is the fact people go through periods where they wax and they wane. Sometimes, despite the best of all possible efforts at support, you get someone at a waning point in their lives and the fit doesn’t work. Sometimes a new person ends up struggling and has trouble asking for or accepting help.

We all know how disruptive and frustrating it is when a hire does not work out. And given the overall challenges with hiring at the moment, it is doubly important to make the most thoughtful choice you possibly can and set the school and the new person up for success.

People are people in their glorious and unpredictable humanity and stuff will happen despite the best, most unbiased and professional of processes. But if the reference checks are done carefully, intentionally and thoughtfully, with questions that come from the vision of what you want to near and longer term future of the school community to be for the student experience, you can better assess the fit in the hiring process and get away from the “would I want to eat in the dining hall” with this person level of questions. We can’t always guarantee lifelong friendships to faculty and staff when we bring in new colleagues but we can build a community with shared hopes and dreams for the kids and their futures.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Julie

Talking Out of School - A few changes starting in November

This past six months this newsletter, the opportunity it has provided me to reflect and opine on such a range of topics, and your support and interaction has been more delightful than I ever expected. I have connected with so many new people and reconnected with many more. And it has been a true pleasure to sit down every week, in the midst of a big life transition, and spend a few hours just trying to focus and then express my thoughts. I have long identified as a writer but often doing it felt like homework to me - recently, it’s felt like dessert. 

It’s also spurred me to consider some other writing projects and with other aspects of Stony Creek Strategy growing, I don’t have the bandwidth to do it all. 

So the Talking Out of School newsletter will start to come out twice a month instead of once a week starting in November, still on Fridays. I will be bringing in some other voices to the discussion and one major topic I will be exploring is governance - what are the main dysfunctions today in the non profit board environment and what is some helpful and practical advice to move boards forward beyond the same old, same old.

I plan to post on LinkedIn every Friday but on the off weeks it will likely be reposting articles or very short commentary.

I am also contemplating a longer-form project reflecting on school leadership, but that’s still taking shape - stay tuned!

I will also be starting Stony Creek Diaries, short reflections on non-school topics, 1-2 times per month on Tuesdays. This will cover eldercare, career change, old house renovations, and other life topics.

All TOOS subscribers will receive both.

Finally, I am doing one of the recorded presentations at the upcoming Carney Sandoe Virtual Women’s Institute, November 1-4. My presentation is about demystifying the salary negotiation process for women and I’ll write up a summary to post on TOOS next week. 

Until then! Thank you.

JF