“Have you anything to add?” is a question most principals pose at the end of interviews for prospective teachers.
“I like the colour of your nail varnish” is one of the more unusual answers I have heard. The teacher interviewee, lacking polish of any kind, was unsuccessful on this occasion.
When I first became a principal, I asked principal colleagues for advice around conducting interviews. In essence, I interviewed principals on interviewing.
“Always ask if they going to take the job,” came the first piece of advice.
“But that’s absurd!” I cried. “They have gone to the trouble of applying for a job and attending an interview. Of course they are going to take the job if they’re lucky enough to be offered it.”
I have since discovered that no question assessing a teacher’s subject knowledge, sense of our school, general investment in education, ethos nor involvement in extracurricular activities is more critical than this question. Recruiting Gen Z teachers during this recruitment crisis is a speed-dating game where the principal is the one with the sweaty palms and dry throat, in cases where we are lucky enough to have an applicant.
For the Gen Z apathetic applicant, the question is not “To be or not be” it is rather “For me or not for me?”
I have learned experientially the importance of checking if the successful applicant would deign to accept the job they applied for. And I have refined my approach to the aforementioned question itself. I come armed with a dramatic level of pregnant pause and poise. I lean in towards the candidate, maintaining a level of eye contact that were the meeting on Zoom, the candidate would assume we were “frozen”.
[ Secret Principal: ‘There is no training that could equip you for this role’Opens in new window ]
I signal with all I can muster that this is the question.
Once the question lands with the candidate, I study their body language, facial expression and level of eye contact. Looking away from the principal is a nonverbal “no”. I listen for their pause, which also signals the “sweet sorrow” of “goodbye”.
I stifle internal expletives when I hear Gen Z candidates say:
“I will keep you in mind.”“I’m exploring a number of options at the moment.”“I’ll need time to consider.”“I have already taken a job this week.”“It’s between you and one other school.”
Principals, not teachers, are being interviewed for jobs during this recruitment crisis.
If it were a date, the principal is most definitely the vulnerable, obsequious, pathetic, sweating creature of the couple, pandering to candidates already in relationships, delighted to share with you that they have a multitude of better offers but somehow signalling just enough interest to keep you swiping. They are double dating us, have told us so, and are beyond both reproach and recruiting and in addition; needing to live “beyond the Pale”.
Dearest Gen Z,
Allow me just for a moment, following years of recruitment rejection, “count the ways I love you” (not).
Gen-keeping-my-options-open-Z.
Gen-I’ll-think-about-it-Z.
Gen-I’m weighing-up-my-options-among-a-long-list-of-other-schools-Z.
Gen-I-know-how-desperate-you-are-Z.
Gen. You. Need. Me. More. Than. I. Need. You.
Gen-it’s-not-you-its-me. Z
x
Principals are experiencing live rejections in the presence of interview panels witnessing both their demise and desperation. We are gladiators entering the recruitment colosseum as the alternative is the even greater abuse from unsatisfied students and parents acting as emperor. who are slowing and publicly giving us a predictable thumbs down.
Theodore Roosevelt’s description of leaders (or principals) as valiant warriors who are “actually in the [recruitment] arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly … and comes short again and again” very much applies to the invisible and often futile time invested in the impossible but basic prerequisite for running a school: appointing teachers to classes.
I am also not the only principal who has shared (following rejection at the interview itself) the educational equivalent of my road frontage, to see if I can lure a candidate back to the dating desk. I know of principals in combat with each other for the same pool of candidates who have paid prospective teachers from June before a candidate (hopefully) commencing in their role officially on September 1st.
One prospective candidate, on offering her the job, told me in a matter of fact tone that I was in a bidding war for her and that she had shortlisted her options between our school and one other. The other school had made her a “very attractive offer”, and if it could be matched, our school could still be under consideration.
I had a brief flashback to a recently endured and very public parental execution (reminiscent of the dramatic opening scene in the movie Wuthering Heights) at a parent-teacher meeting where a parent asked me to explain why it was that I had (despite advertising six times and not getting a single application for the job) failed to recruit a teacher.
I felt emboldened. I felt the happiness level of hundreds of stakeholders was at stake. I had not yet been eliminated from her competition. There was hope.
“Right. Tell me what they are offering. We will match it!” I said confidently.
I could hear her smile on the phone when she told me: “They are paying for my accommodation in Dublin so that I can live here.”
And in that moment, I was (over and) out.