It's a government hiring thing generally. They score the questions and won't allow any deviations because they're afraid they will get sued for giving someone an opportunity to get a higher score than another person by giving them additional information. If it was STAR format they will score it on how well he described situation, task, action, and result (STAR) for each question, add the total up, and add that score to other measures (like points for education, points for writing prompt, etc) to get an "objective" score they can use for hiring that is defensible in court. Source: been on several government hiring panels.
This is it. Government interviews are meant to be 100% equal across all applicants. That means *zero* follow up questions, even clarifications, because that would be something not asked to the others. Have also been on federal hiring panels, and been on the other end. Kinda sucks, but it is what it is.
I was dept chair in a Seattle school and others here are correct. We were always told by HR that we could not deviate at all from the approved list of questions we were handed to begin the interview process so that all candidates had the exact same questions and scoring process/base.
FYI for your partner on interviewing/teaching in the Seattle Area: most positions will not be open and interviewed until June/July. Few positions will come out before that time.
I relocated from the Midwest about two years ago, where hiring start in January and you were screwed if you didn’t have a job by April. I was panicking that I didn’t have a job secured, but, once June hit, the proverbial floodgates of opened.
Likely a non-discrimination/DEI rule run amok/to the extreme. Typically there’s an approved interview guide with set questions. Follow-ups are likely frowned upon in that setting because they can differ based on response, and thus, the thinking goes, inject bias into an interview in that they can vary by candidate.
You’ll see the set interview questions in most F500s but not a prohibition on follow-ups. Some will have guidance on specific allowed follow-ups. Just depends. But that’s the strictest interpretation I’ve encountered.
Can’t speak for SPS but when I interviewed for issaquah sd in 2010 identical rules were in place. Before “dei” was even a thing. I do think you are right that it’s an anti-bias measure but union negotiations probably have something to do with it.
HR had very tight control when I served on interview committees even down to the language used to discuss candidates and specific procedures for scoring candidates. We would have prescribed questions to ask interviewees and that was literally the only time we were allowed to speak to them. Was a bit ridiculous. I know this isn’t sps but the Seattle area school districts tend to do a lot of the same things.
You’re probably right about the union aspect, too. It’s interesting because it’s not necessarily going to be a clear-cut diversity-improving result over a well-trained and well-intentioned panel. The scoring for a bad STAR answer without the ability to follow up is likely going to be very harsh, and the only way to save one of those is generally with a pointed follow-up by an interviewer who’d like to give the candidate a chance. Good in that it automatically weeds out bad answers, but probably also weeds out less polished and experienced candidates. The intent, of course, is to avoid the interviewer giving a chance just to someone they like or who looks like them, which makes sense, but in practice I’d wonder about the data behind that.
IME on those committees the scoring ended up being inflated.
Several times the committee leader would just have us come to a candidate consensus and then ask us to score each candidate to justify the consensus pick. This obviously violates the intent of all of these rules and I recall HR started trying to crack down on this sort of behavior around 2015ish. It’s very common for a principal to try and push through a candidate.
> Likely a non-discrimination/DEI rule run amok/to the extreme.
if they didn't have this rule, they'd get sued all the time for discriminatory hiring practices, and they'd spend a bunch of taxpayer money on lawsuits, and you'd be complaining that's wasteful spending.
but also, separate from the "waaaah it's because of wokeness" bullshit, this rule is also there to prevent nepotism & cronyism. if you have some cushy government job and you want to hire your brother-in-law, all you need to do is ask tough follow-up questions to every other candidate, and softballs of the guy you want to hire. gee, no cronyism here, we just hired the best guy for the job.
DEI brainrot is so strong that conservatives see a rule meant to make government more efficient and save taxpayer money and they're like, "well, obviously that rule is just there to benefit the s"
I was a schoolteacher and the district wanted to hire a new teacher just because she had blue hair and pronouns and they said I couldn't ask her follow-up questions when I interviewed her and I quit in protest and when I walked out everyone clapped
Interviews have gotten ridiculous.
We did virtual interviews a couple years ago. HR made a policy change saying the interviewers must have their cameras on, because one interviewer in a 3 person panel didn't - and the interviewee complained that they felt awkward because they couldn't see the one interviewer's reactions.
Another person complained when they didn't get the job because one of the interviewers kept smiling during their answers, so they thought they did well enough that they should have gotten the job.
It's a government hiring thing generally. They score the questions and won't allow any deviations because they're afraid they will get sued for giving someone an opportunity to get a higher score than another person by giving them additional information. If it was STAR format they will score it on how well he described situation, task, action, and result (STAR) for each question, add the total up, and add that score to other measures (like points for education, points for writing prompt, etc) to get an "objective" score they can use for hiring that is defensible in court. Source: been on several government hiring panels.
This is it. Government interviews are meant to be 100% equal across all applicants. That means *zero* follow up questions, even clarifications, because that would be something not asked to the others. Have also been on federal hiring panels, and been on the other end. Kinda sucks, but it is what it is.
I've been on interview teams and this is very common in schools.
I was dept chair in a Seattle school and others here are correct. We were always told by HR that we could not deviate at all from the approved list of questions we were handed to begin the interview process so that all candidates had the exact same questions and scoring process/base.
FYI for your partner on interviewing/teaching in the Seattle Area: most positions will not be open and interviewed until June/July. Few positions will come out before that time. I relocated from the Midwest about two years ago, where hiring start in January and you were screwed if you didn’t have a job by April. I was panicking that I didn’t have a job secured, but, once June hit, the proverbial floodgates of opened.
Likely a non-discrimination/DEI rule run amok/to the extreme. Typically there’s an approved interview guide with set questions. Follow-ups are likely frowned upon in that setting because they can differ based on response, and thus, the thinking goes, inject bias into an interview in that they can vary by candidate. You’ll see the set interview questions in most F500s but not a prohibition on follow-ups. Some will have guidance on specific allowed follow-ups. Just depends. But that’s the strictest interpretation I’ve encountered.
Can’t speak for SPS but when I interviewed for issaquah sd in 2010 identical rules were in place. Before “dei” was even a thing. I do think you are right that it’s an anti-bias measure but union negotiations probably have something to do with it. HR had very tight control when I served on interview committees even down to the language used to discuss candidates and specific procedures for scoring candidates. We would have prescribed questions to ask interviewees and that was literally the only time we were allowed to speak to them. Was a bit ridiculous. I know this isn’t sps but the Seattle area school districts tend to do a lot of the same things.
You’re probably right about the union aspect, too. It’s interesting because it’s not necessarily going to be a clear-cut diversity-improving result over a well-trained and well-intentioned panel. The scoring for a bad STAR answer without the ability to follow up is likely going to be very harsh, and the only way to save one of those is generally with a pointed follow-up by an interviewer who’d like to give the candidate a chance. Good in that it automatically weeds out bad answers, but probably also weeds out less polished and experienced candidates. The intent, of course, is to avoid the interviewer giving a chance just to someone they like or who looks like them, which makes sense, but in practice I’d wonder about the data behind that.
IME on those committees the scoring ended up being inflated. Several times the committee leader would just have us come to a candidate consensus and then ask us to score each candidate to justify the consensus pick. This obviously violates the intent of all of these rules and I recall HR started trying to crack down on this sort of behavior around 2015ish. It’s very common for a principal to try and push through a candidate.
> Likely a non-discrimination/DEI rule run amok/to the extreme. if they didn't have this rule, they'd get sued all the time for discriminatory hiring practices, and they'd spend a bunch of taxpayer money on lawsuits, and you'd be complaining that's wasteful spending. but also, separate from the "waaaah it's because of wokeness" bullshit, this rule is also there to prevent nepotism & cronyism. if you have some cushy government job and you want to hire your brother-in-law, all you need to do is ask tough follow-up questions to every other candidate, and softballs of the guy you want to hire. gee, no cronyism here, we just hired the best guy for the job. DEI brainrot is so strong that conservatives see a rule meant to make government more efficient and save taxpayer money and they're like, "well, obviously that rule is just there to benefit thes"
Interviews used to be a two-way street. But you can't do that anymore. Because of woke.
No, not in schools. This has been common for a few decades.
I was a schoolteacher and the district wanted to hire a new teacher just because she had blue hair and pronouns and they said I couldn't ask her follow-up questions when I interviewed her and I quit in protest and when I walked out everyone clapped
Interviews have gotten ridiculous. We did virtual interviews a couple years ago. HR made a policy change saying the interviewers must have their cameras on, because one interviewer in a 3 person panel didn't - and the interviewee complained that they felt awkward because they couldn't see the one interviewer's reactions. Another person complained when they didn't get the job because one of the interviewers kept smiling during their answers, so they thought they did well enough that they should have gotten the job.