Why School Leaders Should Try Starting Job Interviews With a Walk

What started on a whim is now a central part of how I interview prospective teachers and administrators.

I’m talking about taking a walk. During my first few years as a principal, I showed finalists around our school so that they could see their potential space and wave to the children whom we hoped they’d choose to serve. That lap might’ve helped convince some hesitant educators to sign their contract, but it was too late to be of benefit to my vetting process. I didn’t glean anything new from it.

A couple of years ago, my practice accidentally changed. A candidate arrived early, full of nerves, and my colleagues on the interview panel were delayed. After some waiting, I decided to abandon the excruciating default of sitting around making small talk. We got up, then walked and talked. It went great—better than I could have imagined.

Taking prospective staff on a lap throughout the building has fundamentally improved my experience of interviewing candidates, and I suspect that they feel the same. Here’s what I recommend to other school leaders.

Start With Clarity and Transparency

As soon as candidates arrive, I greet them and invite them to join me on a 20-minute lap of the building. Transparency is fundamental to healthy collegial relationships and begins during the interview process. I tell candidates exactly where we’re going and why, and if their hands are full, I offer my locked office as a storage space. The rest of the walk-and-talk is individualized based on the specific role, the candidate themselves, and how much they engage.

Candidates should see and feel the building as they might experience it as a staff member. I take them where they would go if they worked at the school and introduce them to potential close collaborators and students. I also share a brief history of the school and a bit about our instructional model. The natural spontaneity that comes with walking through a school is illuminating. Is the candidate interactive? Cautious? Ebullient? These traits often remain true once they’re on staff.

Aim for a Low-Stakes Introduction

For the candidate who’s been fretting in their car all the way to the interview, the walk-and-talk provides relief. Unlike sit-down interviews, which demand immediate eye contact and a ping-pong rhythm of questions volleyed and returned, a walk allows the conversation to flow authentically. There’s noticeably less pressure and anxiety when candidates are chatting, checking out the essays on the wall, or observing interactions in classrooms.

I’ve noticed that sharing a walk actually lifts the energy of candidates. They smile when I offer the alternative start, likely because they were expecting to be plied with questions right away in my office.

Provide Ample Context

On a walk, candidates get to see exactly where they’d work. They’re afforded solid reference points and rich context to ground the questions and answers that flow during the ensuing sit-down portion of the interview. Gone are the days of asking a candidate if they’ve had a chance to look at our website. The school walkthrough is punctuated by natural opportunities to discuss the school and their prospective work in it, which is enriching for both of us.

By the time we wrap up and I ask if there’s anything else I can detail, candidates regularly respond that they feel like they’ve already had most of their questions answered. In a recent interview, a candidate marked off a chain of checkboxes as soon as we got back to my desk, because the walk-and-talk had given her all of the insights that she needed. The job was offered and accepted!

Practice Collegiality

Just like the beloved “walk-and-talks” of The West Wing, so much of the adult work at schools happens shoulder-to-shoulder, during transitions in the hallway. When a candidate and I take a walk at the beginning of the interview process, and the life of the school happens around us, we’re able to replicate a similar feeling. What would it be like to work together? What compels the candidate’s humor, empathy, and joy? I pay attention to these glimmers, which round out the answers that come when we sit down.

Walking and talking is not a new concept. It was the defining procedure of Aristotle’s Peripatetic school, named for the ancient philosopher’s method of talking through ideas while ambling beneath the colonnades, which happen to resemble a school’s hallways.

For extroverted candidates, the walk-and-talk is a chance for them to ply me with the questions on the cusp of their brain, and for me to point to specific practices in the building, rather than speaking abstractly. But the walk-and-talk is really made for highly skilled and capable individuals who observe before they’re ready to jump in: the introverts who might otherwise be passed over because they need time to connect to, and process, a new environment—to hear the story of the school and to make meaning of it. These candidates unfurl and bloom on a long walk between the front door of the building and the door of a conference room.