Be ready. You know how to write up a good résumé, but what career choices most help your career path? Do you know what questions to ask to understand what situation you might be walking into with a new school? Let's get you started.
Résumé dilemmas
The Carney, Sandoe workshop drew a lot of questions about what helps on your résumé. The agency's representatives mentioned that aside from educational credentials, being promoted at least once internally is a big signal to an outside school, as it shows them that you have succeeded at your school, and that the school had (has) a lot of confidence in you.
What about the Diversity Director/Coordinator position? Does it help?
The audience discussed this at some length, no surprise since it is the school administrative position most likely to be held by a person of color (in Ara Brown’s research, heads of color disproportionately made up 57% of heads who had held a diversity director position during their career). The verdict? It depends on how that position is shaped at an individual school. Frequently the position has “lots of breadth, but not a lot of teeth;” it's more helpful to your résumé if the role at your school has decisionmaking and executing roles (true for any position, not just the diversity director one). Not surprisingly, the more responsibility and quantifiable achievements you can show, the better. Supervisory roles, where you’re managing staff, have the most impact down the line.
Which is more important in terms of advancement to further positions, the position or the school?
Is it better to take a more senior position at a small, relatively unknown school, or a less prestigious position at a more prestigious school? This question was initially framed as “English teacher at Exeter vs. assistant head at a school you’ve never heard of in Wyoming” (no offense intended to Wyoming). In a case that extreme, John Faubert said, you take the assistant headship, no question. But if the positions are more like English department chair vs. academic dean, that decision may not be as clear-cut. The dean position probably still gives you more opportunity to develop skills and experience that you need to move up, but, he cautioned, before you dismiss the department chair position, look at the school. If it’s a school that has a strong track record of promoting from within, then that might give the department chair position an edge. If it’s a school that tends to hire its senior administrators from outside, the deanship at the smaller, lesser-known school looks more attractive.
What kinds of skills and intangible elements are people looking for now?
In terms of new-ish trends, empathy and innovation are words that pop up a lot, much more so than even 3 years ago. Carney, Sandoe says that they’re seeing a lot of requests for candidate résumés that show a willingness to try something new and do something different. Elizabeth Brown and Lavette Coney recommended having your soft skills inventoried (Myers Briggs and DISC are popular options) in part for your own awareness and assessment, but also because you will be able to reference the assessment in an interview and talk about your skills in a measurable, quantified way, more than just saying, “I’m good at X.”
Interviewing
Be aware that as a woman and/or person of color, you may be walking into interviews where there are implicit biases and preconceived notions working against you. Take the initiative to address those up front and dispel them. For example, if the stereotype about Asian Americans is that they’re smart but can’t lead, as an Asian American, I should make sure to talk about my experience and comfort with leading a team, and thus get that out of the way. If the assumption about your group is that you’re not as strong on the fiscal/financial management side, make sure you talk about your experience and successes with budgeting and financial management.
Remember that you’re interviewing the school as much as (if not more than) they’re interviewing you. You want to know everything you can to decide whether you want to be there. Elizabeth Brown has a series of questions she recommends investigating when you start talking to a school (if not before):
- What’s the institutional structure? What’s the endowment? Where does the money come from?
- Who are the allies and mentors? Who should you know, and who can you get to know?
- Who makes the decisions?
- What’s the access like? How easy is it to see the head if you have an issue?
- In terms of strategic planning, how are you represented? Which committee would you want to sit on, and are you able to do so?
- What are teachers of color at the school doing? Who’s presenting at conferences? Who goes to PoCC? (Elizabeth says that one term she insists on and makes non-negotiable is that she will attend PoCC every year.)
- Who’s on the board of trustees? Are there people of color, women, parents, educators, broad socioeconomic representation? Do trustees attend the White Privilege Conference?