A successful teaching career, university-level educational leadership courses, a ’roll up your sleeves‘ administrative internship and a lifetime of involvement in schools ready you to be a school leader, but they don’t fully prepare you to find a school leadership job. The final step in the job application process, the interview, is at once the most fateful and the most stressful.
How does a job candidate counteract the fear of being interrogated by a panel of school authorities and stakeholders? Why are a select few invited to an interview and not others? What leadership qualities and professional qualifications are they seeking? How does one calm interview jitters with so much at stake? Are there proven effective communication strategies in an interview setting?
Answers to these questions and more may be found by following telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell’s motto, ’Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.’
First steps
A common mistake from the start is the false premise that all headteacher positions are more or less alike. In fact, just as no two schools are the same – varying in their goals, challenges, priorities and demographics – the expectations each school holds for leadership candidates also differ. Simply put, there’s no such thing as a generic school leader vacancy.
Given these circumstances, the first objective of an applicant for an administrative position must be to learn as much as possible about the school posting the opening and the ways in which a school leader can contribute to the achievement of the particular school’s goals. Fortunately, a wealth of information about these topics can be mined from the internet, perhaps supplemented by engaging in some personal networking.