Evaluating the Impact of Mutual Selection in the Hiring Process and Leadership Consistency on Employee Satisfaction with their Leader

This paper uses qualitative data from a 3-year school transformation program to theorize whether mutual selection in the hiring process matters, as well as the potential importance of leadership consistency thereafter. The data consists of interviews from four time periods over the 3-year program. Interviews were coded to uncover themes related to teacher satisfaction with principal, whether the principal was a factor in the teacher’s decision to join that specific school, and whether teachers believe that mutual selection matters. The results show that in schools in which the current principal had personally hired all the teachers, teachers were most satisfied. They had applied to work under the principal’s leadership and did so. They also believed that mutual selection mattered because it allowed for alignment on school vision, teacher autonomy, and more. Conversely, in schools in which most teachers had been hired by a prior principal – not the current principal – teachers were more dissatisfied. At these schools, teachers were more likely to believe that mutual selection doesn’t matter, even if they agreed that the hiring principal was a main influence in their decision to join the school.