Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Canned interview questions lead to robotic responses. Instead, try a more thorough approach to determine if a teacher will be the right "fit" for your school.

What is your greatest weakness? What is your teaching philosophy? Where do you see yourself in five years? Anyone involved in the teacher hiring process has likely asked—or been asked—these interview questions. But what do the answers actually reveal?

Not much, according to Shawn Blankenship, veteran principal at Piedmont Intermediate School in Oklahoma. Teacher candidates tend to offer rote responses to these widely circulated questions, sometimes coming across like robots in interviews, he observes.

Opening an interview with "tell me about yourself," for instance, reveals little about a candidate's suitability for a position. They're apt to simply rattle off the accomplishments on their résumé, and they "might say they have two dogs and their hobby is golf," notes Blankenship. That information is "not telling me a whole lot."

Unfortunately, principals receive limited guidance when it comes to writing questions that do uncover a candidate's qualities. According to Jennifer Hindman, author of Effective Teacher Interviews (ASCD, 2014), 73 percent of principals aren't trained on how to conduct "effective, fair, and legal" teacher interviews. Often, she says, aspiring principals take one human resources course that covers "everything from hiring to firing."

Yet the quality of interview questions principals ask is key to hiring the right teacher. What should be considered, then, when designing questions that target a candidate's content knowledge and skills and assess their "fit" for the job?