12 Tips for a School Leadership Team during the interviewing process by Dr Paul Walton

A video to guide New or Aspiring leaders through the recruitment and Interviewing process with your team. 12 Tips to start from with the structure of the interviews, what to include and stages to follow:
1. Reading CVs (Impact)
2. Cover Letter (Experience, Academics, Aligned to your vision. Is this personalized.
3. Attitude over experience?
4. 3 stages of Interview (Informal, Formal and Final)
5. Informal - information about yourself and further information about the school, be transparent.
6. Share further information with candidate such as school brochures, key facts or any further links that are relevant to the role they have applied for.
7. Formal - normal questions about the role, key priorities of the job, check against cover letter, approach of the school, competency-based questions and probe for scenarios of what they did and the outcome. Include Safeguarding questions.
8. Extra - opportunity to talk to an existing member of staff (Informally) about living in the area, the country, working in the school, students, staff and parents. To help the applicant, not to remove them from the process.
9. Meet team and discuss
10. Final - after meeting the team. Cultivate any areas that need to be addressed. Further questions about role, challenges, more character-based questions and how they work with others, any flags need addressing, looking for a growth mindset and can do attitude. Include information about package, add ons and any specific information.
11. Offer made, include opportunity to talk, further questions
12. Communicate to all candidates about final outcome and offer a follow up or feedback to the unsuccessful candidates.
Offer buddy/onboarding and include in emails and updates.