As an HR professional, you’ve no doubt conducted a staggering number of interviews in the last few months. As the pace of hiring picks up, how many of those interviews go beyond whether the candidate has the basic skills required to do the job? How many uncover the depth of knowledge a job candidate can draw from? How many tell you whether the candidate has the kind of attitude that would be a good fit in your school district?
San Antonio ISD (SAISD) is working to ensure that every job interview elicits more than just basic information. It has made a significant time investment to train all department heads and principals to ask the kind of questions that require a candidate to dig deeper than they normally would, sharing their values, knowledge, and problem-solving skills. The district’s HR leaders hope that the investment pays off by helping supervisors find the right people to fill their open positions.
Some districts wait to find out which candidates principals are interested in before checking references, work history, and conducting background checks. It’s just the opposite in SAISD. Before a prospective teacher ever meets with a principal, HR professionals have made sure that he or she has cleared all the potential hurdles and can be hired. HR checks the following:
Principals are often relied on to check references or verify a candidate’s job experience. HR takes care of those important details in SAISD, allowing principals to focus on whether or not a candidate for a teaching job will be a good fit on the campus and in the open position. “We manage more of that on our end than some other school districts because we feel that’s our role,” said Toni Thompson, SAISD associate superintendent of Human Resources. “We don’t ask principals to sift through 90 résumés.”
That’s true for other positions with the district as well. Before the district interviews a clerical worker, HR ensures that the person passes all the clerical assessments that are relevant to the position. “Clerical staff is expected to come to the table with a specific skill set. We want to be certain they have the skills they say they have before they interview,” said Beverly Mathis, HR administrative officer, paraprofessionals and substitutes.
The extensive work HR does before interviews saves principals time, but that’s not all. “For me, personally, I want [principals] to know all the things we do behind the scenes…so that the trust level between principals and HR is high,” said Suzanne Norton, HR administrative officer, professional recruitment and hiring.
Once a job candidate has cleared all the relevant hurdles, supervisors must prepare for the interview. Asking questions that will tease out the qualitative things they want to know is the next order of business.
“The most difficult thing to do is to hire good people. If you do that, you can meet your goals. If not, you spend a lot of unproductive time,” Thompson noted.
For SAISD, conducting behavioral interviews is a major part of finding the right people. Research has shown that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future success in screening job candidates. Behavioral interviewing focuses on candidates’ past experiences and asks them how they would apply what they know in a similar situation in the future. It involves scenarios that require candidates to focus on their depth of knowledge, how they gained that knowledge, and how it would contribute to solving problems they might face in the future.
For example, principal candidates should have some leadership experience to draw on to give an HR administrator some idea of how they would lead if they were hired. A behavioral interview question should require a prospective principal to provide on-the-spot analysis to prevent him or her from giving a rehearsed answer.
An HR administrator might ask a principal candidate, “Tell me about a new policy or idea you recently implemented that was considerably different than the standard procedure. What approach did you take to get others to go along with it?” or “Have you supervised people who do not work well together? What have you done to get them to do so?” Both questions require candidates to draw on relevant experiences and illustrate their method of solving problems in their answer.
Some questions principals might use to learn more about the skills, values, and experiences prospective teachers bring to the table would be, “Why did you choose this type of work?”; or “What do you do differently than other teachers?”; or “How do you go about developing a rapport with parents?” Supervisors also ask questions designed to gain insight on a candidate’s personal characteristics related to the requirements of the job.
Behavioral interviewing techniques are not new to SAISD’s HR staff. “It’s just kind of what we’ve done all along. We’ve just formalized it and are taking it farther by training other supervisors,” Thompson said. A TASB HR Services consultant provided training on how to conduct interviews for 77 SAISD supervisors in the spring. “I know a lot of people walked away saying, ‘Gosh, we’ve been doing this all wrong.’ It wasn’t a matter of doing it wrong. It was a matter of perspective,” Thompson said.
Principals were just trained to use the same techniques in July and will use their training as they interview prospective teachers. Thompson said the techniques will have to be in place for awhile before the district will know whether the training will have an impact in terms of hiring better candidates.
She and other HR administrators will reinforce the need to use the technique as supervisors prepare for interviews, helping them choose or develop interview questions. In some cases, HR will work with supervisors to conduct interviews. The message to supervisors is clear: the district is committed to behavioral interviewing long-term. “Our job now is to make sure they don’t lose what they learned,” Thompson said.
The major cost for the district in providing training for supervisors is the time involved, and Thompson believes the hiring outcomes that result will make the investment a bargain in the long run.
Conducting interviews isn’t as simple as asking the right questions. It also involves information gathering and filtering by the interviewer to determine whether the candidate would be a good fit with the district or campus.
One thing Superintendent Robert J. Durón insisted on when he came to SAISD was that principals who were hired needed share the district’s core values. SAISD’s core values are:
Interviewers are listening for evidence of those values as they interview principal candidates, as well as candidates for other positions. Focusing on the values the district wants in principals in particular has helped the district zero in on the best candidates. “You can’t teach someone to have the right core values,” Thompson said. “This has resulted in better candidates being hired because we’re looking beyond the skill sets.”
The district also follows the lead of Southwest Airlines, hiring for attitude and training for aptitude. Interviewers listen for indications that a candidate wants to learn the things he or she needs to know to do the job well. “It’s imperative that in addition to having the skill set for the job, the candidate has the ‘will set,’” Thompson said.
Clearly, a candidate’s skills are important, but for SAISD, they are just one of the things interviewers need to know about to make a hiring recommendation. “If you just interview for skills, you miss out on the opportunity to find out what people can do with what they know. That’s just really important to us,” Thompson said.
