Grace Church School DRAFT Hiring Manual NB: This draft is intended to provide a useful starting point. We still need lots of input to make it better. Dear reader, whoever you are, don’t hesitate to send suggestions to Robbie, Kim, or Jean-Robert. We seek to align our work with best practices for antiracist institutions. Over time, we expect to learn about ways to do anti-bias hiring better, so this document will, and should, change. Table of Contents I. Introduction: Starting with the Whys II. The Pre-Process 1 A. Annual spring training for anyone who might be involved in hiring and for anyone generally interested in attending this training generally. B. Solid exit interviews C. Identifying the best places to advertise 1. Researching how employees with marginalized identities found us, especially if they are multiply marginalized (POC *and* a person who didn’t go to an elite school) 2. Asking employees that “contribute to diversity” about their networks 3. Figuring out what our “street rep” is among “diverse populations” D. Cultivating/Grooming/Gathering folks to attend NYSAIS Job fair and empowering them to negotiate E. Agree on language regarding antiracism & applicants (independent of race) III. The Process A. Acknowledge a need B. Admin appoints hiring team and a hiring manager and alerts HR C. Team writes the job description and solicits input on the competencies an ideal candidate would have. D. Assistant Head posts job description E. Team crafts and assigns questions to ask of each candidate F. The hiring committee reads applicant résumés and identifies first-round candidates G. The hiring committee interviews the first round of candidates H. The hiring committee selects finalists for the second round of interviews I. The finalists participate in the second round J. The hiring team makes reference calls K. The hiring committee makes a recommendation to the Head of School L. The hiring process ends with the launch of the onboarding the new employee. IV. Exceptions to the above 1 The “Pre-Pre-Process” would entail a thoughtful exit interview of any outgoing employee. This manual has helped us better see opportunities for more improving our onboarding process, our exit interview practices, and the ways that hiring and professional development and support could better interact. 1 A. When student safety requires it B. When there is an exceptional internal candidate of color 2 C. When the internal pool is strong and diverse 3 D. When the Head of School makes a promotion or title change 4 V. Annual Reporting VI. Appendices A. Sample Invitation to Join a Hiring Committee B. Article on effective interview questions C. Legal and Illegal Questions D. Interviewer Biases E. Roles Definitions 5 2 In assembling this manual we had valuable discussions about the ways in which identity does not equal analysis (thanks, Imani, for sparking this conversation). A candidate would not qualify as “exceptional” without possessing antiracist competencies. Here again we see the need and opportunity for our new professional growth systems to better define what that competency looks like and to better support growth and indicate where such competency seems lacking. 3 So, here again, “strong” would necessarily require being antiracist (along with demonstrating excellence in teaching, professionalism, etc). Future drafts of this document may need to move this point from the footnotes to the body of the text itself. It’s an important one. It’s also one that obligates us to further work and reflection. 4 The school should do an audit of how internal promotions tend to work, looking at the data disaggregated by race/identities: who gets promoted or has titles changed most regularly? How can we as a school support individual goals about career advancement most equitably? 5 Greater clarity is needed about the role of the hiring manager, the composition of the hiring committees, the role of HR in ensuring the process is followed and that it adheres to laws about hiring. We will seek to add a section. 2 I. Introduction: Starting with the Whys Why do we have a Hiring Manual? Grace uses this Hiring Manual because nothing is more important to the success of our program than the people hired to work within it. This Manual is designed to help us identify and hire the best candidates for any open faculty, staff, or administration position at the school. Why is the hiring process that’s laid out in this Manual so prescriptive? Grace is seeking to develop equitable, anti-bias hiring practices. A healthy process acknowledges and seeks to account for the way human beings are influenced by implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat. When hiring processes differ from job to job, an institution risks allowing bias to impact the shape of a process and not just its execution. Why doesn’t Grace just trust administrators and interviewers to be objective? Research suggests that believing in one’s own objectivity can hinder one’s ability to be objective. Researchers from the Perception Institute put it this way: Somewhat ironically, evidence suggests that when people assume they are objective, they are at a greater risk of inadvertently allowing bias to influence their decision-making (Pronin, 2007). Indeed, inviting people to affirm their objectivity actually has the effect of increasing their discrimination (Uhlmann & Cohen, 2007). By contrast, teaching people about how the unconscious mind operates and the challenges of behaving objectively may lead them to be more skeptical of their own objectivity and better able to guard against biased evaluations (Pronin, 2007). 6 By naming our proclivities towards bias and by adopting policies designed to control for them, we hope to make better and fairer hiring decisions. Why is Grace seeking to develop a more racially diverse faculty? 7 Our mission demands it, as educational excellence requires diversity at all levels. There have been ample studies to show that racial diversity is a catalyst of innovation; it increases the mental engagement of all participants and more effective problem-solving. Consider, for example, a 2006 study involving mock juries, which found that racially diverse juries weighed evidence more 6 From “The Science of Equality in Education: The Impact of Implicit Bias, Racial Anxiety, and Stereotype Threat on Student Outcomes” by Rachel D. Godsil et. al. Perception Institute (February 2017), 13. 7 Simultaneously to our pursuit of greater racial diversity, we are seeking to support the growth of antiracist competencies for all faculty and staff. 3 rationally and arrived at fairer verdicts than all-white juries. 8 Groups that look alike are more likely to exacerbate bias and prejudice than racially diverse groups. There is a robust body of evidence supporting the benefits students experience when they have a teacher who shares certain identities with them. As a school committed to cultivating a sense of belonging for all members of the community, Grace must strive to have a faculty that reflects the diversity of the student body. Lastly, Grace seeks to be a model of a Beloved Community, a school that: ● tells the truth about racism and the harm it causes to members of the school community; ● envisions a just future where all feel an abiding sense of belonging regardless of their identities; ● equips members of the community with the knowledge, skill, and desire to bring about racial justice, reconciliation, and healing; ● lives boldly its commitment “to the work of anti-racism and the cause of justice.” The school’s practices around hiring--and not just their results--are a site for building the Beloved Community Grace seeks to embody. II. The Hiring Process A. Acknowledge a Need The hiring process begins with the recognition that the School needs to fill a position: either because an incumbent will be vacating it or because the school is creating a new position from scratch. In the first instance, when a pre-existing job needs filling, it is worth discussing whether that job is presently structured ideally. Most often, it will be, but such a discussion may occasionally help identify ways the job responsibilities could shift to better serve the School. B. Admin appoints hiring team and a hiring manager and alerts HR. The composition of the hiring team must reflect the school’s belief that the work of the team will be enhanced by enlisting diverse perspectives. Certainly, the diversity of perspectives represented in the hiring team should reflect racial and gender diversity; it should also reflect a diversity of perspectives within the school (e.g., a classroom teacher, a division head, curriculum coordinator, etc). Members of the hiring team should receive a formal invitation to serve (see Appendix A for a letter). This letter will frame accepting the opportunity to serve on the team as an affirmation that the individual will follow certain enumerated best practices for anti-bias hiring. Starting in SY 2021–22, all employees who wish to be eligible to serve on a hiring committee must first complete a training for anti-bias hiring. The Assistant Head of School will set up such training annually. 8 See “On Racial Diversity and Group Decision Making: Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on Jury Deliberations” by Samuel R. Sommers (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006). 4 C. Team writes the job description and solicits input on it and the competencies an ideal candidate will possess. The team crafts the job description, mindful that such high-visibility documents offer Grace a chance to put its values on display. When the description is drafted, it makes sense to solicit input on the responsibilities the new hire will be asked to carry out and the competencies an ideal candidate will possess. An equitable process begins by recognizing that every employee of the school interacts with multiple constituencies within the school; seeking the input from those with whom a new hire will interact professionally ensures that the job description has the opportunity to reflect the hopes of a community broader than just the hiring committee members. Descriptions should outline the responsibilities of the position and the competencies an ideal candidate will possess; they should name Grace as an equal opportunity employer and include the school’s commitment to anti-racism, equity, and belonging. D. HR, in consultation with the Assistant Head of School, posts Job Description When the description is ready for posting, the HR manager in consultation with the Assistant Head/Director of Studies, will post it to the employment page of the school. In all cases, the job will also be posted to the jobs pages of NAIS, NYSAIS, NEMNET, NAES, and shared via the POCIS/NY listserv. In most cases, the school will invite candidates from Carney Sandoe, Educator’s Ally, and Stratagenius. There may be senior administrative positions which the school may seek to fill via a retained search. In such circumstances, the school will ensure that the outside consultant helping to facilitate the search understands the values that shape Grace’s hiring practices. A goal for SY21-22 is to explore ways of publicizing open jobs within academic communities 9 such as HBCUs and local university job sites. 10 E. The team crafts and assigns interview questions to ask of each candidate 9 Some schools frame PoCC as being not merely a valuable professional development opportunity for the school but as also an opportunity to demonstrate to potential candidates the school’s commitment to its values in general and its BIPOC faculty in particular. 10 This sort of external recruitment is not distinct from our internal efforts to strengthen our community and better realize our antiracist aspirations. 5 Having an agreed upon set of questions to use for each candidate helps ensure that interviews focus on the competencies of the applicant and don’t drift improvisationally. This does not mean interviewers cannot ask individualized questions when they have them--perhaps to clarify questions about something on a candidate’s résumé--but it does mean that every candidate should have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their skills in the specific competencies the hiring team has determined are most crucial for their position. In crafting and assigning questions, multiple interviewers should be responsible for asking questions designed to determine a candidate’s cultural competency. The school should seek to signal in its interviews that anti-racism and equity work are not siloed at Grace but a concern and commitment of all. A note about effective questions. Effective interview questions ask candidates about what they have done rather than what they believe. [See Appendix B for a summary of an article on asking Experience-Based Interview Questions.] Ineffective questions (e.g., “Tell me about yourself” or “Where do you see yourself in five years”) promote assessments of candidates based upon nebulous notions of “fit.” More effective questions lead interviewees to provide substantive examples of past work (e.g., “How have you evaluated your teaching?”; How have you used and evaluated student homework?; “Can you tell us about a way you’ve adjusted your teaching practices to better promote equity and inclusion?”). Once the team has a list of questions prepared, they should discuss what they will be listening for to evaluate the answers candidates give to them. They should also remind themselves of the sorts of questions they must not ask of candidates, including questions related to sex, age, race, religion, national origin or marital status--or any other personal information not related to the job. F. The hiring committee reads applicant résumés and identifies first-round candidates When reading résumés, the hiring committee should remember 11 the following (adapted from “Training the Trainers: Promoting Equity and Excellence in Hiring”) 12 : Criteria: Read the résumés with the previously agreed upon list of desired competencies in mind. Look for areas of value (e.g., non-traditional experiences, skill sets, hobbies, training) that align with the school’s mission and values. Ideally, these criteria should connect to the sorts of criteria we use to evaluate and support faculty growth. 13 11 Some companies have begun experimenting with software that will mask candidates’ names and those of educational institutions on their résumés as an anti-bias measure. When such software becomes more readily available, we may choose to experiment with its use. 12 “Training the Trainers: Promoting Equity and Excellence in Hiring” a collaboration between the Perception Institute and Sandra Chapman Consulting (shared November 23, 2019), 14. 13 An intention for Spring 2021 is to develop shared standards that describe excellence in curriculum design, pedagogy, professionalism, and leadership at Grace. Such standards should come to inform the competencies we are seeking in candidates (being those that we are trying to develop in ourselves). 6 Pedigree: Push yourself to look beyond prominent institutions or the absence of them. Likewise, experience teaching in independent schools is good, but for most positions it shouldn’t be a requirement; stay open to alternate paths that excellent candidates may take to Grace. Good Fit: This phrase can often imply that you easily envision a candidate working at our school--perhaps because, in positive ways, they remind you of the colleague leaving--or, perhaps,--of yourself. To avoid the tendency to seek and hire for same-ness, challenge yourself to be specific about what constitutes a good fit. Gaps, etc: When a résumé raises questions--as might, for instance, a gap in a candidate’s professional experience--avoid inventing negative explanations for your question and, instead, give the candidate the benefit of the doubt. Evaluate résumés by the information they include. There is no set number of candidates to invite to a first round interview, with the size of the pool determined by the hiring team’s sense of its strength and diversity. Optional Phone Screening: Grace has not typically included in its hiring process the phone screening of first-round candidates. If Grace adopts such a practice, the adult carrying out the calls should ask each candidate a handful of questions. In an article from The Executive Educator , Paul Ash suggests that a ten-minute phone conversation can help ensure that the hiring team meets with a higher caliber pool of candidates. 14 For classroom teachers, Ash suggests including: ● A question clarifying something on the résumé ● A question to tap the candidate’s sense of mission and enthusiasm ● A question about curriculum knowledge ● What instructional strategies a visitor to their classroom might see in November Whoever conducts the phone screening should report back to the hiring team, sharing factual information gleaned from the call so that the team can use it to shape the pool of candidates invited to the first-round of interviews. G. The hiring committee interviews the first round of candidates The committee members assign themselves questions from the list they compiled. Those predetermined questions should form the bulk of each interview question, although it can also be 14 These question categories come from the summary of Ash’s article in The Best of the Marshall Memo: Book One by Kim Marshall and Jenn David-Lang (Epigraph Books, 2019), 105. 7 appropriate for the hiring team to ask individualized questions (e.g., follow up questions when an earlier answer is gauzy and vague; clarifying questions about items on the candidates résumé; etc). The hiring manager distributes a feedback form that asks each interviewer to evaluate the candidates according to each competency, along with an overall rating. The committee should refrain from sharing their first impressions of the candidates until every member has had the opportunity to submit their post-interview feedback in writing. This is difficult, and yet crucial, to do. The effectiveness of the hiring team depends upon its members providing honest feedback on the candidates; their first impressions should be free from the influence of the reactions of others. H. The hiring committee selects finalists for the second round of interviews. Weighing equally the feedback of each member, the hiring team strives to reach a consensus about which candidates ought to advance to the second round as finalists. All finalists should be strong candidates who possess the skill required to do the job well. It is the policy of Grace Church School that there must be a person of color among the finalists. This policy intends to safeguard against the hasty assumption that the candidate pool is deep enough to proceed towards making a hire. If a candidate of color has not emerged as a finalist, it becomes the responsibility of the assistant head of school to seek to recruit additional applicants. I. The finalists participate in the second round of interviewing. The second round of interviewing seeks to provide the hiring committee with the data they will need to make a hiring decision. That may come from feedback from additional Grace adults who are given the opportunity to meet with the finalists, ask questions of their own, and fill out feedback forms about the competencies of each candidate. For full-time teaching positions, finalists will typically guest teach a lesson to Grace students. For administrative positions, the hiring committee will try to design an equivalent activity. For technology-based positions, a candidate might be given a laptop with a hardware or software problem to solve. The hiring committee should also remember that the second round offers an opportunity to provide the candidates with the information they will need to make a decision about whether to accept an offer. They might, for instance, make a point to give finalists tours of the school. J. The hiring team calls references and makes a decision. Grace does not make a job offer to a candidate without first checking references for them, including--for all teachers presently working at other independent schools--a phone call with the candidate’s head of school. Since candidates are likely to provide the contact information of 8 colleagues they trust to say nice things about them, Grace adults performing reference checks should deploy certain strategies for getting the whole truth from a candidate’s references. Claudio Fernández-Aráoz in The Harvard Business Review suggests taking certain steps to maximize the effectiveness of a reference call. Kim Marshall and Jenn David-Lang summarize his advice, writing: ● Agree with the candidate on a comprehensive and relevant list of references to call. This should include former bosses, peers, and subordinates in previous jobs. Narrow the list by thinking about the specific characteristics of the job you’re trying to fill. ● Structure the conversation up front. Say how important it is to get the full story, since the candidate won’t benefit from getting the job if it’s a poor fit. Say that you realize no candidate is perfect--everyone has strengths and weaknesses--and it’s important that you hear about them up front so if the candidate is hired, you can provide appropriate onboarding and support. Fernández-Aráoz recommends talking in person or on the phone: “It’s easier to solicit the whole truth when you hear hesitation or emotion in a person’s voice or see it on their face.” And emphasize that all comments will be kept confidential. ● Help the reference avoid common biases. If you start by asking an overly general question (“What can you tell me about Carol?”), Carol’s employer will usually trot out her best characteristics--and will then feel the need to be consistent with those positive comments when answering subsequent questions. ● Ask about the candidate’s social and emotional competence. “We tend to hire people on the ‘hard’ (IQ and experience) but fire them for their failure to master the ‘soft,’” he says. “References are one of the best ways to assess the latter.” ● Check values and cultural fit. Will this candidate fit in and succeed in your organization and work collaboratively with you and your colleagues? ● Probe for downstream qualities. Will the candidate keep learning, adapting, and growing? “Ask for examples of situations in which the person has shown the hallmarks of potential: curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination,” says Fernández-Aráoz. 15 Proposed Practice: Grace adults conducting reference checks should send a written summary of each reference to the members of the hiring committee. As part of its due diligence for preventing educator sexual misconduct, the School should retain these summaries of reference calls for new hires. K. The hiring committee makes a hiring recommendation to the Head of School. The hiring committee will seek a consensus around whom to hire. To do so, it can help to employ strategies that anonymize the input of each member of the committee. In recent years, one such 15 Advice from “The Right Way to Check a Reference” by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz in Harvard Business Review, February 11, 2016, summarized in The Best of the Marshall Memo , 107-8. 9 strategy has been to have members of the committee vote anonymously for their preferred candidate before disclosing their preference to their colleagues on the committee. Ultimately, the Head of School is responsible for hiring Grace employees (with the lone exception being the Head, the hiring of whom is the Board’s responsibility), so a recommendation from the hiring committee is ultimately just that: a recommendation. Assuming the recommendation is accepted, the Head will make a job offer to the chosen candidate--or may delegate that responsibility to an administrator who served on the hiring team. In certain instances, a deadlocked committee may advance two candidates and ask the Head to make a final determination between them. Sometimes the Head of School is on the hiring committee; sometimes not. In all cases, the Head interviews individual candidates for full-time jobs before offering them a position. L. The hiring process ends with the launch of the onboarding the new employee. Proposed : The hiring committee’s final task is to discuss ways to support a successful transition to Grace. At the very least, this might entail identifying a member of the team to reach out to congratulate the new hire. It might also entail identifying a colleague to whom a new hire might address questions. In certain cases, references may have alluded to supports that would ensure the new hire thrives at Grace. The hiring committee might brainstorm ways to provide those supports, taking care not to violate the confidentiality of the references. III. Exceptions to the Above 16 A. When student safety requires an immediate hire The school has a duty to keep its students safe. In the event of an unexpected opening, the school may need to act swiftly to ensure that classrooms are adequately staffed and students supervised. In such instances, the Head of School may deem it necessary to collapse certain steps in the process outlined above. Such exceptions should be rare and never the result of poor forethought from the school. In such cases, it might make the most sense to label the new hire as an interim, ensuring that a thorough and equitable process can take place before the position is filled with a full-time hire. B. When an exceptional candidate is about to accept another offer There are times when Grace’s hiring cycle for a position is not well aligned with similar positions in other schools. On rare occasions, the school may alter its practices when the failure to do so would mean losing an exceptional candidate from the applicant pool. This should take place only rarely 16 We will seek to develop protocols for each of these exceptions so that the process is as clear for them as it is when we are following the steps outlined above as part of the normal hiring process. 10 and never without: the candidate having completed a full round of interviews; the hiring team being in unanimous agreement; and references having been checked. C. When there is an exceptional internal candidate of color Hiring is too important for the school ever to compromise on getting the best possible person for any job. At times, that best person may be known to the school already from work they are doing in a different capacity within Grace. When that candidate is a person of color, the Head of School may determine that the time that could be saved by avoiding a Potemkin search--i.e., one in which the school goes through the motions of a process whose outcome is already clear--merits appointing the internal candidate without going through the full search process. Such a decision must be made with awareness of the costs of an abbreviated process and the questions of fairness it can raise. 17 D. When the internal pool is deep and diverse The school may determine not to post a position externally if the administration is confident that the pool of internal candidates is both diverse and strong, full of finalist-caliber candidates that would not be surpassed by outside applicants. In such cases, the administration may still consider posting the position publicly, weighing the costs of doing so (e.g., time drafting and posting a job description, reading résumés, and disappointing candidates who might become less inclined to apply for future jobs) against the benefits of doing so (e.g., when an internal candidate is hired, the community has confidence that they cleared the highest bar). An obvious point that is nonetheless worth mentioning: while administrators can encourage promising candidates to apply for positions, they must take care not to make implicit suggestions (or explicit promises) that any candidate is likely to be hired for a particular position. E. When the Head of School makes a promotion or title change From time to time the Head of School may promote individuals or change their titles without dramatically altering the scope of their work (e.g., naming someone as curriculum coordinator; making an assistant director into a co-director of a department). Such decisions are up to the Head’s discretion and do not require a search. IV. Annual Reporting These hiring procedures are designed to ensure that Grace hires the best available faculty and staff, doing so in ways that are consistent with the best anti-bias practices for hiring. Each year, the Assistant Head will prepare a hiring report for the Institutional Culture Committee of the Board. Among other data, it will list the number of applications, the number of finalists, and the number of 17 We have been urged to revisit this exception and will make a point to do so annually. 11 finalists of color for each position filled. If ever the hiring procedures outlined above are not followed--presumably for one of the reasons enumerated in Section III--that decision will be flagged and explained. V. Appendices A. Sample Invitation to Join a Hiring Committee B. Article on effective interview questions C. Legal and Illegal Questions 18 D. Interviewer Biases (from Nemnet) E. Gendered Word List Still to Do: 1. Edit this to note where there is a distinction between full and part-time positions. 2. Be clearer about how the hiring committee may receive written feedback from additional interviewers/colleagues, which would then inform their decision. 3. When a candidate has a pre-existing relationship to a member of the hiring committee, the entire hiring committee should be made aware of that connection. 4. Add the nepotism rule from the Personnel Manual here. 5. Be specific about how “internal candidates” will sometimes include former faculty. 6. Acknowledge the bias that could come into play in the selection of a hiring team. 7. Complete the appendices 8. 18 From Safe and Effective Faculty Recruitment, Retention, and Dismissal Practices: An ISM Handbook for Private-Independent Schools (2008), 67–70. 12