How to Prepare for a Principal or AP Job Interview

In a job interview, you have to convince the interview team that you are the best candidate for the position.

Now you don't say that directly.

You don't go in and brag and say, I'm the best, but you do make an argument about your qualifications that should make you rise above the competition.

And of course you don't see the competition.

You don't know who you're up against, but you do have to present better evidence than your competition does.

And one way you can make sure that you do that is by practicing five minute answers.

I think of this as the type five, like a comedian, would have before they get on stage in a stand-up comedy routine right that's the rule of thumb in stand-up comedy you have to have a tight five five minutes of jokes before you're ready to get behind the mic and do stand up and in an interview you're given a certain amount of time right you probably have half an hour or maybe it's a 15 minute screener or maybe it's a longer interview 45 minutes or an hour or maybe it's even a multi-hour interview In a standard interview, though, there are typically, you know, a small number of questions and a certain amount of time.

And you have to kind of figure out how much time do I have per question.

And in education, I specialize in educational leadership interviews.

In education, you typically can expect about five minutes per question.

And if you practice for five minutes per question, you're going to be in great shape no matter how long you actually have.

but frankly most people are not in great shape when it comes to talking for themselves about five minutes at a stretch like this feels weird to most people to talk that long people get self-conscious after just a few minutes because in an interview typically the interviewers don't interrupt you right you're allowed to say as much as you want to say you use your time and then when you're done they go on to the next question and that really weirds a lot of people out in an interview and they get self-conscious and they say well i guess i've i've said enough so they shut up And they haven't said enough to really explain their qualifications and explain their answer to the question.

So you've got to be careful about that.

You've got to make sure you're using your time effectively.

Now, another thing that throws people off is they worry that they're rambling, right?

If you're talking for five minutes, at some point, you're probably going to feel like you're rambling.

And the way to make sure that you're not rambling is to organize your answer into three main points.

I call this the rule of three.

And if you have three main points, you're going to stay on track and your answer is is going to make more sense and be more memorable to the interview team.

So rule of three, three main points.

And then I'll give you one more tip in this video.

If you can work a story into your answer, that's really gonna strengthen it.

But you have to be careful with stories because they can get too long and they can draw the attention away from you as a candidate, especially if a story is very powerful You have to make sure that it still makes the case about you and doesn't distract.

Like if you have this just amazing story, well, you don't want them to just remember that you told an amazing story.

You want that story to illustrate why you were the best candidate for the job.

So you want to make sure that you practice that story, you remove any distracting elements from it, like if anything terrible happens or if anything just as too distracting, pull that out and practice getting that story down to one minute and make sure that it portrays you in the way that you intend.

And sometimes people don't think about this in advance and they tell a story that's really just kind of a brag.

So make sure it's not just a brag.

And the best way you can make sure that your answers sound good is to practice them on video, right?

Like on TikTok, not a lot of people make videos.

Very few people get on camera and actually make videos because this is an uncomfortable thing for most people to do.

But you don't have to post your practice videos.

If you practice on your phone, you're going to be in incredible shape compared to people who do not practice.

And that's going to be the majority of people who don't practice.

If you have an Ed Leadership Job interview coming up, I want to encourage you to practice with my 52 practice interview questions for school administrators.

This is a free download.

We've had well over 10,000 people download it now and use these both to interview principal candidates and to prepare for their own principal interviews.

So if Get those at principalcenter.com slash interview.

They're completely free.

I recommend that you print them out, practice your answers first by writing out bullet point answers with pen and paper, and then practice talking into your phone and answering with that type five in mind.

Practice each answer with a five minute timer or just record yourself and make sure the video sticks to five minutes and you are going to be in great shape.

We have lots of other job search resources, but that's the one I recommend starting with.

52 practice interview questions at principalcenter.com slash interview.