The Urge to Settle

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Time is of the essence as you race towards the finish line to Christmas. If you are in Australia or New Zealand then the end of the school year is approaching. At this point you may or may not have your staffing arrangements in place for 2021. If the answer is ‘not’, that can cause a fair amount of anxiety. Trust me, I know!

I have always worked in hard to staff schools. Those less desirable schools that were remote, regional or simply not close enough to the good shops for most people’s liking. Predictably, these schools were usually the ones with the students with challenging behaviour.

My last school leadership position was in a school in a very remote location in a community that was in the news for ALL the wrong reasons.  When you said the name of this place, you could see the expression change on your listener’s face, usually to one of shock and every now and again to one of derision.

Having been a manager in another profession before I was a school leader I knew that hiring the wrong people was deadly to the team (and not in the good way).  So very often when our backs are against the wall and we are staring down the barrel of starting the next school year off with fewer staff than we need, we are tempted to desperation hire.  To get in any warm body who is willing to sign up. We start to drop our standards and accept candidates that we simply would not consider if we had a few more weeks up our sleeves.

I am writing to implore you not to do this! It is well worth holding out for the right people who are going to share your vision for what your school can be and whose natural talents in teaching align with your approach. 

In 2018 we were in such a spot. We thought we had secured all of our teachers and then one after another they informed us that they had accepted positions elsewhere.  We were simply place holders for them in case they didn’t get something better. At first I was furious. Then I was grateful. If these teachers didn’t want to put us first and join our team enthusiastically then we didn’t need them.  We hunkered down and reviewed our selection criteria.  We were ONLY going to accept teachers who wanted to be with us. We were ONLY going to accept teachers who believed in the possibilities of our students and were willing to build relationships with them. We were ONLY going to accept teachers who wanted to come on board with whole school approaches and work systematically and explicitly.  

So we held out.  The executive leadership team ended up teaching the classes ourselves instead of putting warm bodies in classrooms and this lasted for quite a few weeks.  In the end we contact a recruitment agency who came through marvellously. Yep, it cost it.  But the money spent was well worth it. To have accepted lesser candidates who would not have come on board with our high-expectations agenda was simply a price too high to pay.

We considered, not only the impact on the students if we hired the wrong people, but the impact on our existing team. What were we saying to them about how seriously we were taking our vision if we hired just anyone to be colleagues? Why would be add to their cognitive and emotional load by hiring people who would make life harder for them?

When you are leading change and working towards continuous school improvement, it is necessary to be single minded in your dedication to the cause you are working for – your students. They deserve teachers who will see the light in each and every one of them, who will hold them to a high standard and help them reach their goals.

 When you are leading change, the biggest and most important factor is the quality of the people around you. That doesn’t mean that they are necessarily the most experienced, the best looking, the ones with the flashest resumes (although they do need to know how to spell!).  The are sometimes the quiet achievers who don’t say much. They work well with their teams, strive for better and give their all.

When I am recruiting, I follow the rule of trusting the ’30 second chemical reaction’. This has always held true for any industry I have worked in.  Any time I don’t trust my instinct, I end up regretting it.  If you get a good feeling about a person. If they are thoughtful in their answers and tick your boxes for selection criteria in terms of their personal attributes, then you are on the right track.

If however, you ignore that little voice in your head (or heart) and find yourself talking yourself and others into why they would be a good candidate, you will know you could be about the make a mistake.

So, resist the urge to desperation hire. Don’t let your anxiety, sleep deprivation, under the pump responses be your guide. Instead take a deep breath out, reflect on the kind of school you want to build and invite only those who are worthy to join your team.

I wish you the best of luck as you approach the final weeks of school.

Take care

Jocelyn

1 comment

I have just been through this process. I have led this staff through 8 years of literacy training, worked my butt of collecting data, analysing data, putting programs in place, coaching reluctant teachers, budgeting, writing reports for Annual Report, Governing Council, External Reviews etc etc and we now have a new boss who has to learn the ropes so advertised externally. There is no training available for application writing or interviewing so I couldn't even learn how to do the best I could, I had to wing it. I didn't pass the first application writing but the person who won it turned it down. Something better had come along. So it was re-advertised and I had some help to write the application and made it to interview. I spent the whole of the Sunday on you tube as that is all I had available to me. I didn't get the job. The girl who did get it doesn't have nearly the experience I have but Merit Selection said the panel (2 of who had known me for the whole 8 years) could not take their knowledge into consideration, only the 1000 words on the application and a 30 minute interview. My passion and hard work in the past was overlooked by a process. If anyone knows where you can find training on application  writing and interview skills, please let me know. 

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