We are deep in interview season and in my 27 years in education I can estimate that I have sat in over 250 interview (from both sides of the room!). I have coached aspiring administrators and facilitated a lot of interview prep. There are certain questions that you can anticipate in an interview and I advise people to practice for those questions. In fact, I wish that every person interviewing for any position would practice their 2-3 minute elevator speech answer to what is usually the first question: Please tell us about your background and experience related to this position. When this is the first question, you can start off strong or you can get off on the wrong foot and never recover. I have had applicants spend 10 minutes on this question and then get cut off because of time and never answer the last few questions. I have had others say so little that the panel was left wondering how they passed a paper screen. The key to this question is finding a balance of details that highlight your work related to the position without reciting your entire resume. If you are interviewing soon, I highly recommend you prepare and practice for this question and time yourself!
In addition to the anticipated questions, a good panel will have some questions that are more surprising, more unique, and you need to be ready to answer anything. One way I recommend you can prepare for this style of questions is to keep a document (I keep mine in Evernote so it’s always available on my phone) of your work strengths and highlights. Right before I walk into any interview, I review my strength document. That way, I’m going in with a reminder of key programs or leadership moves I want to make sure to talk about during an interview. I am prepared with stories and I just want to find the right question to fit the highlight. Two questions we have recently been asking have led to some fascinating answers; they have also led to a lot of rambling that I wish some people could have answered better.
- What are you passionate about and how has that impacted your work?
- Share with us a leadership mistake you’ve made and how you’ve handled it.
For the first question above, I love to know that candidates are passionate about something… anything! Sometimes we hear about specific content areas, pet projects, outside hobbies, or unique skills and talents. Some people sound like they are trying to impress us by saying that they are passionate about educating all kids, or doing their best job. While I hope both of those statements are true, when I ask this question I want to get to know someone. I want to know that they have a semblance of a work-life balance, that they have interests beyond their job, and/or that they are open and willing to research something new, to life that life-long learner status.
I am passionate about traveling, reading, writing, and going to concerts. It is easy to explain how my reading and writing passions have impacted my work as a teacher, a literacy coach, and a leader. You might be wondering how I might connect my other passions to my work. My love of traveling has opened my eyes to different ways that other countries approach education, new cultures, and things that I didn’t know. By traveling, I am able to see life experiences that are vastly different that my own, which has created more empathy and curiosity. These have led to my equity work and the necessity to ensure we have greater representation in our curriculum, our staff, and our events. The joy I experience during a live concert with a friend is something that I want to see replicated in our school experience for each student. Watching talented artists do what they do best is inspiring. I want all of our students to be inspired, to find what they do best, and to live a life full of passion.
Our question about a mistake has led to some beautiful and soulful answers. I appreciate that just about every administrator we have asked this question of recently has started by saying something about how they have many examples to choose from because we are all always making mistakes and learning from them. That is the first idea that I am listening for with this question. The second part I am listening for is less about the actual mistake and more about the recovery and learning from the mistake. I want to hear that people are able to admit and own their errors, apologize when necessary, repair harm, make a plan to fix the problem, and create a system to ensure they don’t make the same mistake again.
Listening to some great responses recently had me reflecting. Though I know and believe in my heart that we all make (and should make!) mistakes often, as a Type A person I have struggled with making mistakes. I have been a recovering perfectionist for a long time and am still helping my brain learn the idea of FAIL = First Attempt In Learning. I will beat myself up after sending a message with a typo in it for way too long. I can be stubborn and I don’t like to be wrong. However, this internal anxiety is related more to easily corrected errors that come from speed and lack of attention to detail. The bigger mistakes that I make as a leader are real and I’m not ashamed of them. They give me pause for reflection and learning.
Sometimes it takes a lot of time to provide the right perspective on a past mistake. For instance, there was a situation with two people I supervised in the past. This pair attended an out-of-district professional learning event together. On the day of the event, I didn’t know where they were or why and my boss was questioning me. I sent a hasty text or email to get clarity and that communication caused a lot of stress. After the event, my colleagues explained to me when they thought they had shared the information with me in the past. While we disagreed about if or when that happened, I apologized for my hasty reaction and the unnecessary stress it caused. What I realized after the fact was that one of these people was someone I trusted fully and one was someone who was in need of a lot of coaching and support and was someone who had lost my trust. My hasty reaction was a result of the lack of trust. The person who I did trust lost trust in me because of my reaction and I had to repair our relationship with personal conversations, additional apologies, and clarifications of my actions as well as details about why I did respect and trust the person. I also learned the value of slowing down and gathering details before making a hasty decision or communication.
Interviewing candidates for a job is one of the most important parts of my role as a district leader. It is also one of the most challenging. I take the responsibility seriously. You can only tell so much about a person from an application and an interview. Until someone is in the job, doing the work with other people day after day, you cannot fully know how well they will fit the position. If you are in a season of interviewing, I wish you luck!
While this post is not directly related to Instructional Leadership, you might be interested in posts from my Explorations in Instructional Leadership: