Recruiting for School Leadership Roles

Getfeedback are experienced in supporting educational organisations to select the very best recruits who will excel in role. Our recruitment and selection support will help to ensure that schools objectively recruit a diverse workforce and ensure that the process is cost effective.

The ability to select the right leaders and managers to lead a school is critical to any school’s success. Assessing and selecting applicants is one of the most important challenges facing recruiters. Getfeedback have over 15 years’ experience in supporting our clients to selecting the leaders to drive their organisations forward. Our approach to assessment is based on extensive research and well researched methodology. It has been designed to provide organisations with an objective understanding of an individual’s leadership strengths, preferences and ability and provide a view of these strengths within the context in which they will be required to operate.

Indeed psychometric testing and personality profiling are increasingly being used to objectively help sift and select candidates for senior management roles as noted in the suggested selection activities in the DfE’s publication in December 2017 Recruiting a headteacher A guide to the recruitment and selection of headteachers and other leadership roles.

Getfeedback’s approach to profiling is to get a sense of an individual’s natural preferences and behaviour and how those preferences play out at work is dependent on a number of different factors; as illustrated in the diagram below. Profiling is used to find out about the behaviours and competencies that the individual uses; their personality and motivational preferences; and their cognitive ability/intellect.

Strength Identification Analysis

As part of any recruitment profiling Getfeedback recommend a combination of interview and a series of online questionnaires. Getfeedback utilises a range of online tools, dependent on specific school requirements and assess based on the well validated Schroder model of high performance.

The Assessments

Behaviours and Competencies

Behavioural Event Interview (BEI) is a semi-structured interview designed to elicit examples of how an individual gets things done; or in other words the behaviours they exhibit in a live work situation.

By listening to the individual talk about two real-life experiences the interviewer records evidence of how they have used the 11 behaviours that comprise the Schroder High Performance Behavioural Framework.

Designed by Harold Schroder, after 30 years of research the framework can differentiate between high and low performing individuals i.e. those individuals who add value within the organisation.

Cognitive Ability/ Intellect

Cognitive ability has been found to be a strong predictor of an individuals’ ability to perform in role. Cognitive ability is linked with the ability to solve problems; quickly understand novel situations; and evaluate possible solutions.

The Verbal Assessment measures a candidate’s ability to evaluate the logic of various kinds of argument as presented in written form – example questionnaires include Watson Glaser or Verify Verbal (managerial/professional level). The Numerical Assessment measures a candidate’s ability to make correct decisions or inferences from numerical or statistical data- example questionnaires include RANRA or Verify Numerical (managerial/professional level).

Personality and Motivation

Assessing personality and motivation tells us about the kinds of work situations an individual is likely to be comfortable in and enjoy. It can give us insights into their values as well as telling us what is likely to motivate an individual and help them to be the best they can be. This information can also help us to understand how an individual might interact with those they work with.

Getfeedback work with schools to identify the most suitable tests and selection techniques for your specific requirements but tools utilised by our educational clients previously include tools such as:

• OPQ Leadership Profile
• Hogan Development Survey
• Dimensions Personality Profile
• Giotto test of integrity
• Intrinsic Motivation Profile
• RANRA – numerical reasoning assessment
• Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Assessment

Getfeedback’s support can vary depending on each individual’s schools requirements based on their internal resources and processes. Support can vary from the provision of individual psychometrics to test for specific abilities or attributes to full individual profiling of an applicant.

Getfeedback are specialists in independent, objective and accurate assessments and have assessed over 10,000 individuals to date. If you would be interested in profiling your current or potential headteacher or senior management team please contact us to discuss your requirements:

info@getfeedback.net

01491 845536