Top Tips for Teachers' Interviews

Two Primary Teachers Write…

… We are both Primary Teachers on the hunt for long term / permanent teaching positions, and have put off fully engaging in looking for teaching jobs as we each had our own reasons for dreading the application process and especially interviews. Wanting to be more confident we individually decided to take matters into our own hands and signed up for Prospero Teaching’s CPD event “Refining Your Interview Skills” of 2nd July.

And what a revelation it was!  Here are a couple of the things we learnt during this interview skills training

We all know we’re not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover.  But let’s face it; we’re all human. And it turns out, so are head teachers 🙂 ! They want teaching staff who make children feel good, so as an interviewee, you need to make them, the interviewer feel good. You can do this by giving them a very positive first impression; tell them how delighted you are to be at their lovely school, and most of all…. smile!  Look like you enjoy being there.

The real wake up call came when we had to talk to each other and dive in with the kind of questions we think might crop up in interviews whilst also considering how we’d like to come across and how we really do. We noticed there was a big gap here and started working on it immediately, supporting each other as well as getting guidance from the fab CPD facilitator.

And it worked! One of us got the job we next interviewed for  🙂

We had a great morning, learning loads of easy to implement teaching interview tips and what’s more, we got to meet like-minded people! So much so, we’ve become friends and been in touch ever since.

One of the things we found we agree on is that as a teacher, you never finish learning. What does this mean for us? That we’ve already signed up for Prospero Teaching’s next CPD course, Assessment for Learning.  Will we see you there too?

By Cheryl and Linda