As the school year comes to an end, so does the tenure of NAESP's Mentor Center principal. Here's her final entry:

With retirements, resignations, and staff moving into different positions in the district, I needed to hire seven new staff members. Most school districts around us are on the opposite end of the spectrum; they are laying off staff. Because of this I have had to screen hundreds of applications for the hiring process. Something that you don’t learn in college is how to efficiently screen applications to narrow down the amount of candidates for interviews.

Our district uses a committee process to hire additional staff, so I formed seven different committees and seek their input on interview questions that addressed what qualities we were seeking for each position. I found it very important to have dialogue among the committee members after interviewing each applicant, and by the time we completed interviews each day we were able to come to consensus on our top choice for each position.

I then had the additional time-consuming task of calling all references (which usually turns into multiple games of phone tag) before offering the candidate the position. I’ve learned from a previous experience to always wait for the candidate to accept the position before calling the others to inform that they were not chosen for the position. In addition, I’ve found it very helpful to use a script on an index card when I call each candidate because, otherwise, I fumble with my words when giving him or her the bad news.

What have others found to be helpful in the hiring process to ensure that you hire the best candidate and save time when flooded with hundreds to choose from?