Successful recruitment

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  Hello, my name is Clare Collins and I have been a governor in West Sussex for 15 years. Currently I’m the Vice-Chair of the National Governors Association (NGA), and in my time I’ve been involved in the recruitment of four headteachers. I’m going to talk about successful recruitment. My talk will cover attracting the right candidate, making an attractive job offer, planning the selection process, exploring a wider talent pool and sources of advice and support.

  So, to start at the beginning, which is ‘attracting the right candidate’. It may be stating the obvious, but the governing body needs to decide who the right candidate is, and it’s vital the governing body spends time thinking about and deciding what the key characteristics are for their required candidate, before they advertise the post. As the applicant pool shrinks, governing bodies needs to explore all options, and maybe be open to new models, for example, co-headship, federating.

  Something else the governing body should explore is their attitude to unusual experience and background. For example, their attitude towards career breaks needs to be firmed up, and also young candidates rocketing through the system. Also, candidates who’ve worked outside the education sector – such candidates can bring a breadth of experience, and new energy, which would be of great value to a lot of schools.

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  Having got a clear picture of the required candidate, the governing body will need to advertise, and the usual place for this is in the Times Educational Supplement, but it is also useful to look at websites and the local press to see how wide the net should be cast for these potential candidates. This will be costly, but casting the net wide will give the best chance of attracting the candidate the school needs. The other half of the equation to attracting the right candidate is making an attractive job offer. It’s important to define and articulate what makes your school different, because I believe that difference, and making a difference, will attract good candidates.

  Also – does your school present a challenge? My experience is that headteachers like a challenge. Obviously improving standards is a challenge, but in high-achieving schools, the requirement to maintain high standards can also be a considerable challenge. And then of course there is the challenge of broadening the curriculum and extending services. The offer also needs to articulate how the headteacher will be valued. The governing body should be offering appropriate professional support to all candidates to …or should be offering opportunities for career development beyond the school, quality performance management, and of course, the support of the governing body itself, as the headteacher settles into the post, and thereafter, as a critical friend.

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  The next stage is to plan the selection process. This can be extremely daunting, and it’s important that the governing body uses all the professional help that is available to them. Plus the knowledge of the governors on the governing body who have experience of interviewing and being interviewed. It’s important to remember the purpose of the process, which is to find the right candidate for your school and not just the best candidate on the day. To do this, key criteria need to be identified, with interview tasks designed to find the candidates who will best meet those criteria. I believe governors should be confident, and add different tasks if they feel that these tasks will add to their knowledge of the candidates, and what these candidates will be able to bring to the school.

  The stages of the process should be mapped out with a timeline. Shortlisting is necessary even if there are only a few applicants, as there is absolutely no point in interviewing hopeless cases, even if it is to make up numbers. The invitation to the interview should include as much information as is possible for the candidates, so that they know what to expect on the day, and can perform the tasks well. The tasks and the interviews will need timetabling – usually a logistical nightmare – and plenty of time needs to be allowed for the decision-making, especially if the decision is going to be a difficult one; bearing in mind that the most difficult decision might be not to appoint.

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  Diversity awareness dictates that governing bodies should be exploring a wider talent pool, all through the process. Governing bodies’ expectations need challenging – will they be a looking for a male or female candidate? Do secondary heads really need to be male? How young and how old? Is 30 too young, is 57 too old? What about black and minority ethnic? Or disabled candidates? Would a wheelchair user be a challenge to your school? What about sexuality? If it is evident, and not what you’d expect, does it matter? If it isn’t evident, but something you suspect, does that matter? Faith or no faith? No faith may be as much of a problem as the wrong faith. I believe all these issues need to be addressed throughout the process.

  Throughout the process, sources of advice and support will be available. Your local authority governor services will offer training for the governing body, but governing bodies need to be aware that this may focus on the process and not on training governors to be competent interviewers. You might actually have interviewing skills already amongst the governors on your governing body. The advisory service will offer a consultancy process, especially for the interviews on the professional sides of the job on the day. But again, the local authority’s advice services can differ in quality and also within the service of each authority, depending on the officer assigned to the school for the day. There are other providers – professional associations, ACSL (Association of College and School Leaders), NAHT (National Association of Headteachers), also private providers like Areté will give consultancy advice – at a cost, but the cost needs to be balanced against the cost of getting the decision wrong. Informal support is harder to come by, but that can be invaluable. Governor Association networks can put you in contact with other governors who have recently recruited headteachers and their experience will be absolutely invaluable.

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  So, to conclude, the four lessons I have learned through my own experience of recruiting headteachers is first it can be extremely difficult to judge the strength of the field of the candidates you’re seeing on the day. I can’t emphasise how strongly you need to bear in mind that you’re not recruiting the best candidate on the day, but you’re looking for the best candidate to lead your school. Secondly, the difficulty of predicting the future behaviour of any candidate, no matter what tasks they’ve completed on that adrenalin-fuelled day can be very very tough. Then thirdly, expectations change as headteachers move schools on – you’re about to embark on an interesting journey for the school and things will change. And finally, on a note of optimism, I believe that better management training and higher expectations of headteachers mean that the pool may be shrinking, but what is out there is constantly improving. We may need to change the way that we think about how we recruit headteachers, but I believe what is happening out there is an opportunity, not a threat. Thank you.