Becoming the Successful Candidate

School Administrator, Feb, 1994 by Jan R. Cummings

Shine Those Shoes and Polish That Resume, a Superintendent Search Consultant Advises

Becoming a superintendent in the district of your choice starts with the decisions you make about your career path and continues through creating a resume, developing interview skills, and learning a few simple do's and don'ts.

Before I tell you about stashing those gold bracelets, tucking that shirt in, checking your male-chauvinist-pig attitude, and cutting the chunky buttons off your sleeves, let's talk about my first impression of you.

I am a superintendent search consultant who has worked on searches for school districts of between 12,000 and 115,000 students. In each search, I may have well over 100 resumes to review. Those resumes often give me my first impression of you. Do whatever you can to make it a good one.

Resume Overkill

Your resume and its cover letter tell me a lot about you. From them, I immediately observe your organizational ability as well as your literacy, and I get a pretty good idea of your ego.

The size of your resume sometimes forces me to believe that you own stock in Kinko's copying business--or worse yet, that your ego must be oversized! You overdo it when your resume is 80 pages printed on both sides or you send us three Federal Express deliveries or a full-length video. That has happened more than once.

When you tell me you are involved in "sight" (sic) based management, I naturally question the depth of your knowledge on the subject. If you spell "mathamatics" the way I just did or you've written the cover letter in longhand with a pencil, you do not send a professional message. Type whatever you send me; check your grammar and spelling; and use a clean format with bold headings so I can quickly spot the information I need.

In trying to put your best foot forward with your paper credentials, you may get so much advice on how to write a resume that it results in a hybrid product. Your title page says it's the resume of _____ . Who else's resume would it be? Just put your name cleanly and boldly at the top. Then below that tell me how I can reach you at home and at the office. If you've got a fax number, give me that as well.

Please don't tell me your job objective. I'm doing superintendent searches and that's what your objective should be. It also helps if you try to make your resume specific to the search. If your opening letter tells me you are interested in the Seminole County search when this is the Orange County search, I wonder whether you know anything about the position for which you are applying.

Then I want to see your educational background, followed by your professional experiences, starting with your most recent position. Please don't write your exact job description here. Instead, summarize your major duties (if you are not a superintendent) and list your significant accomplishments. In these, I'm more impressed if you can tell me the result of your reorganization, rather than the fact you reorganized your district staff.

The school boards I work for also want to know the size of the district you are working in (the number of students) as well as the amount of money and number of people you manage. They want to know the diversity of your district. Please give me that information for each district you worked in. Some boards require experience in certain size districts; some boards want to be sure you have worked with diverse communities.

Best References

The faster you give me that information, the happier I will be to continue reading your resume. Making consultants probe for information may result in your resume. being set aside. If the resumes of other applicants are more organized, provide the information I am looking for, and are just as substantive, they may knock you out of that semi-finalist pool.

Board members also want to see a sampling of your community activities, awards and honors, and perhaps publications or consulting activities. Please don't list 12 pages of publications or consulting activities--just the most important ones. Also give me a short summary of your management style, not a dissertation on situational leadership!

End your resume package with either a university placement file that contains your transcript and reference letters, or provide your transcript and a couple of your best reference letters.

Always give an additional list of references with home and business phone numbers. People are busy; sometimes you have to catch them in the evening. Occasionally call those references yourself. It is amazing to find so many disconnected, now unlisted, or inaccurate numbers in reference checking. Your references can be your best friend or your worst enemy. References who are inarticulate, poorly organized in their thoughts, or know little about your professional or personal abilities do you more harm than good. Choose your references carefully.

Also understand that we are going to check you out with people who are not your listed references. We do understand you will have your detractors, particularly if you have been making any significant decisions. Our responsibility is to understand not only what your detractors say about you but also why they say it and to put that into the total picture.