Since our department is Respiratory Therapy, first we need to apply the requirements of our programmatic Accrediting Board COARC. Then we can do the job analysis. I need different skills for different positions. If they are clinical instructors, they need strong clinical skills, knowledge of clinical tasks and procedures, and be very good at independent decision making skills. If I am looking for a Didactic instructor they need to understand how to control the classroom environment, be knowledgeable in the subject matter, understand the learning domains etc.
Detail-oriented, pleasant disposition, high job knowledge, likes students, gets along well with others, and uses classroom time/space wisely. Lastly, attending/teaching to the different learning styles in the classroom is important as well.
Gayle,
The teacher you are describing is tough to find. Where and how do you find folks with all of these traits?
Jeffrey Schillinger
The traits I hire for are mostly inherent of our profession which is Dental Assisting. The "teaching to all learning styles" is the trait that faculty either come in with or learn on the job.
The traits I hire for are mostly inherent of our profession which is Dental Assisting. The "teaching to all learning styles" is the trait that faculty either come in with or learn on the job.
Gayle,
What are some specific things you do in the hiring process to identify this ability in potential faculty members?
Jeffrey Schillinger
Tough question to answer. Intuition plays a part as well as asking the questions "Tell me a time when (describe a student-based scenario)..." and "explain how you handled (another student-based scenario)...". Open-ended questions are great, gets the scholastic conversation going.
Gayle,
One key to behavior-based interviewing is to tolerate silence so that the interviewee has the time to formulate an answer and so the interviewer does not bail out the interviewee by "helping" with the answer to avoid an uncomfortable silence.
Jeffrey Schillinger
The skills that I require in hiring faculty.
1. Competent in Swedish, Deep Tissue, Sports and Prenatal massage techniques.
2. Use of good body mechanics.
3. A good communicator.
4. Able to efficiently demonstrate massage techniques to class.
5. Knowledgeable in subject matter.
Qualities I look for in hiring faculty.
1. High standard of professional ethics.
2. Integrity/trust worthy.
3. A sense of fairness.
4. Someone who is not prone to extreme emotional mood swings.
5. Good with people.
Calvin,
A massage instructor that fit the model you describe would be a dream come true for a college. What are the specific things you do during the hiring process to help you identify candidates with fairness and emotional stability?
Jeffrey Schillinger
I primarily focus on work experience in the field that my program covers, hands on experience is paramount. Secondly, a broad base of knowledge, it is important for me to be able to place each instructor in a variety of modalities. Classroom experience, such as time spent as a TA are important as well, on my campus we try to groom our future instructors from our TA pool.
James,
Many career colleges do not use teaching assistants. How does your college benefit from using them beyond the grooming process that could lead to a faculty position?
Jeffrey Schillinger
We add TA's to specific courses that meet the required student population. The addition of the TA to the classroom offers that much more experience in classroom conversations as well as an extra set of eyes and trained hands during our honds on trades.
Some of the skills that I want my instructors to have is the ability to relate to the students. If they can relate to the students on some level, then the students will be more responsive to the instructor, making them a more effective teacher.
I also like to see the ability to think on their feet. Answering questions, and knowing what they are talking about or being able to come up with a new way to learn is valuable in an instructor. It allows for the learning dynamic to change with the demands of the class/cohort.
Elanor,
How can you determine if an instructional candidate will be able to "relate to students" during the interview process?
Jeffrey Schillinger
While I should acknowledge that my role does not include hiring faculty, if it did, I would want many of the same attitudes that others here have mentioned: Subject Matter Expertise, Relevant Degrees, an understanding of their fields, Communication skills, experience and knowledge of how to teach their subjects & and goals that suggest that they are interested in my school.
But others that I would seek would be a healthy sense of humility: Not false humility. I would want someone comfortable with their accomplishments and experiences, but has ability to relate these to students without bragging. Ideally, the way they should conduct themselves in a way that inspires their students and shows them what could be possible if they work hard towards achieving their goals. I have known some that (I hope) unintentionally make students feel inadequate.
I would want to make sure that their teaching style incorporated active learning activities and used different forms of instructional technologies in the classroom.
I would also want instructors that think on their feet.
While I was interviewing for a position as an ESL instructor, I had an interviewer ask me how I'd move Mount Fuji. We had been having a standard interview up until that point, he was good at his role, and it felt more like a conversation with an interested listener than an interrogation.
I have since learned that he probably plagiarized that question from Microsoft, but at the time, in that interview, it came completely from left field. My answer doesn't really matter, but I had one that gave quickly, which he seemed to like. -- and the conversation resumed.
I got the job, and later asked him the point of the question, since I had worked with him enough to hear the question sometimes, but not others. He said that he used it when he thought he had a good prospect, but wanted to see what we'd do with the unexpected.
Looking back, I can say that he was on to something.
Teachers that have to have things go a particular way, at a particular time, but can't adapt to opportunities or situations in the classroom can't connect with their students, or personalize the content of their lessons to the same degree that teachers who are comfortable doing so are able to.
There are several ways I see if they can relate to the students.
First, I ask questions about why they are in this field, why they are chosing to become an instructor, what their biggest challenge was in school, how did they overcome these challenges, etc.
Second, I do roll playing type questions where I would either ask how they would respond, or have them act out a specific situation.
Using these methods, I gage the reaction time and how they relate. I also don't start them off as the primary instructor, but as a Teaching Assistant (or other variant) to see how they would relate as a first instructor later on.
Thank you for this post, David. Most interview training now tries to steer interviewers away from hypothetical questions and more to behavior-based interviewing that requires the person being interviewed to talk about how he or she handled a specific situation in the past. The theory is that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. The Mt. Fugi question would not qualify as behavior-based, though it is interesting.
Jeffrey Schillinger
Elanor,
I suggest focusing nearly all of the interview on how folks "have behaved" rather than "would behave." Past behavior is a pretty good indicator of future behavior.
Jeffrey Schillinger
That is an interesting assumption being made on the part of interviewers.
I would argue that it is unreasonable to expect someone to accurately tell you the face that he or she makes when someone asks him or her a question that seems off topic, or even perhaps rude or inappropriate. They may know the face they want to make, but that isn't the same thing as the one we actually do make. If it were, poker would be a pretty boring game.
The fastest way to find that out is to ask a question, and see what type of face that person makes. The key though would be if that look was actually a core function of the job, or if it were being used to judge some other aspect of the candidates personality.
Now, I can see the value of asking a story about what the person did in the past because the way that they position that answer will tell me what they CURRENTLY see as a good way to resolve a situation like that
-- The reality is that this "ANSWER" could be complete fiction-- granted that insight would still hold true, they think that is a good answer, and that would tell me something I need to know.
Or the answer might have been true then, but isn't actually true now. Physical & cognitive abilities, and self-concept can be grossly out of sync. So what a person says they did in the past, even if true then, may not actually be true any longer. Just because I used to have a good memory, does not mean that I still do, even if I believe that I still do. An instructor may have picked up some bias against a certain behavior type in his or her time as a teacher that he or she didn't have in his or her idealistic youth and that would skew actual performance from believed performance.
My point here is that the interviewer knew that I would be in a room where I would not be able to speak the language of those around me, and would not be able to count on using language skills to gloss over or fix a situation that had "gone-sideways" and that my expressions, body language, and ability to think on my feet were DEAL-BREAKERS in a culture that feels that customers/students should be figuratively treated like royalty/dieties.
Since recruiting and training teachers in that context has direct costs, as well as indirect costs (bad lessons while people learn how to work abroad, deal with culture shock, that school's niche in the market place) I think actually forcing a candidate to put their money where their mouth would be a valuable addition to an interviewer.
-- In a sense, it seems to touch on the same sensibilities as having an instructor prepare a 10 minute demo lesson since students would often ask questions that did seem to come from left field, and being new to the English speaking politeness norms, some would cross lines.
I relate this back to teaching here, because in the classroom I get questions that seem to be completely off topic, or seem to indicate a complete lack of attention, and I know that the face that I make in response to that is a HUGE part of the connection and trust that I have with my students. That trust allows me to leverage my relationship with them in such a way that some students will take chances and learn things in my class that they might not be willing to learn if they felt like they would be judged for it-- and that leads to student learning and students achieving their goals.
My question would be, so what is it about hypotheticals that is worse than past situations?
Since they both, in my opinion, can only reliably show what the person currently believes to be an appropriate response to the question?
