When this isn’t working as well as it could, the consequences can be:

• A “warm body” to fill an open position
• A dissatisfied educator with unfulfilled expectations
• A educator whose skills, knowledge, and/or disposition do not fit with the school needs and who drain time and energy of administrators and colleagues.
  

When this works well, the consequences can be:

• A mutual decision-making process where the school and the candidate play active roles;
• A great match between the hired educator’s skills, knowledge, and disposition and the needs and culture of the school;
• A new educator with realistic expectations about the school;
• The transmission of school culture and norms to the newly hired educator;
• Administrators and colleagues who understand the support needs of the newly hired educator;
• A new educator who emerges from the hiring process with some beginning collegial relationships already established;
• All candidates, even unsuccessful ones, go away from the process with positive regard for the school.

What we know from the research:

• New teachers who report that the hiring process gave them a comprehensive and accurate preview of their jobs also report being more satisfied with their jobs than those who say that they did not experience such a hiring process. (Liu, 2005)
• Recent research has also suggested a relationship between the characteristics of the hiring process itself and teachers’ perception of a job’s desirability. Researchers found that scores on a hiring process scale (which measured such process attributes as ease of application, length of the process, and timeliness of screening) were the most powerful predictor of attraction to a teaching job in that district. (Liu, 2005)

Promising Strategies for Creating an Information Rich Hiring Process

• Develop a screening and interview process that provides multiple avenues for mutual learning between the hiring team and the candidate. The hiring process may include:
  • Interviews
  • Classroom observations
  • Other faculty-life observations
  • Sample lessons
  • Providing school and community information

Hiring for fit requires finding a candidate with the needed skills and competencies and the attitude and values that fit with your school's culture.

The National Network for the Study of Educator Dispositions web site provides links (down the right side) to papers on assessing attitude and disposition.
http://www.educatordispositions.org/moodle/moodle/ 

There are several instruments on the market such as the Gallup Organization's TeacherInsight™ web-based tool that help assess teacher characteristics.
http://education.gallup.com/content/default.aspx?ci=22093