Faculty Hiring

People are the core of any school. While students are at the center of Westminster, faculty members play a vital role in cultivating the school’s culture and core values of community, character, balance and involvement.

 

Westminster is known for its deeply committed faculty members who devote their lives to the care of students. Choosing who will join the Westminster faculty is an important responsibility and vital to the life of the school. Every year, we have many applicants who would like to be educators at Westminster. They are attracted to our community and want to teach, coach and live in the dorms.

 

How do we select the best people to be members of the faculty? It is a process to which we devote a great deal of time and energy. Our goal is to recruit and retain a diverse faculty that stands out for its willingness and enthusiasm for taking the extra step to make each student’s academic and extracurricular experience personal and meaningful. Our faculty members make every effort to know our students as scholars and as individuals. These meaningful relationships are essential to life at Westminster School.

 

As the Associate Head, I oversee all aspects of faculty hiring. In December of each year, Headmaster Bill Philip asks faculty members who may be thinking about leaving to share their plans. Their reasons for leaving can range from retirement after decades of service, to electing to attend graduate school full time, to seeking a new geographic area in which to live, to accepting a new opportunity, to leaving education altogether.

 

The hiring process begins in January for the most senior available positions and can run into the spring when searching for a teacher with less experience. In addition to knowing what discipline will have the opening, we look at what coaching slots and housing options will be available as we begin the process. In many ways, it is like trying fit together a jigsaw puzzle, with many different factors at play.

 

For an open position, I post a job description on our school’s website, along with other appropriate websites. We may also list the position with Carney Sandoe Associates (CSA)and other placement agencies that specialize in boarding schools. CSA is the largest placement service for independent schools. They prescreen applicants and send schools a complete dossier on a candidate: resume, references, college transcripts and their own interview notes. They also filter the pool based on the needed attributes such as experience, athletic coaching and special talents.

 

I read every resume that comes in and, unlike many of our peer schools, respond to each and every applicant with an acknowledgment, stating that we will contact those candidates who best fit the school’s need. These resumes are shared with the Dean of Faculty, the Director of Studies and the Department Head.

 

When evaluating a cover letter and resume, we look for a number of factors:

 

Once we have culled through the resumes, I conduct Skype interviews for the next round, often with seven or eight candidates for each position. These interviews personalize the process and provide insight into a candidate’s interpersonal skills and interest in the position. Depending on how many openings we have, we will also attend independent school hiring fairs, where we can meet up to 12 candidates in a day for a preliminary interview.

 

The next step is to invite selected candidates to visit Westminster for an on-campus interview. We include all faculty members in the hiring process by holding a reception for each candidate the night before an interview day. These gatherings are held in a faculty member’s home and all are invited. The purpose is for the candidate to get a sense of our community and meet people that he or she would not necessarily encounter during the interview day, and to give all faculty members a chance to meet with the candidate. We devote a significant amount of time and resources to provide this kind of reception for all candidates, and we do it because of the premium we place on our core value of community. We have received consistently positive feedback from candidates about these events. After the reception, a smaller group will take the candidate out to dinner, and then he or she will be our guest overnight.