Hiring Teachers: Most Likely to Succeed

[From Malcolm Gladwell, circa one year ago. A great analogy that should give us (those who participate in the teacher hiring process) pause. I'd argue that schools looking for new senior administrators or even a head of school should also give it consideration. Click on the link below the introductory paragraph in order to read the full post.]

On the day of the big football game between the University of Missouri Tigers and the Cowboys of Oklahoma State, a football scout named Dan Shonka sat in his hotel, in Columbia, Missouri, with a portable DVD player. Shonka has worked for three National Football League teams. Before that, he was a football coach, and before that he played linebacker—although, he says, "that was three knee operations and a hundred pounds ago." Every year, he evaluates somewhere between eight hundred and twelve hundred players around the country, helping professional teams decide whom to choose in the college draft, which means that over the last thirty years he has probably seen as many football games as anyone else in America. In his DVD player was his homework for the evening's big game—an edited video of the Tigers' previous contest, against the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.

via www.gladwell.com