HIRING THE BEST CANDIDATE IS EASIER WHEN YOU KNOW THE RIGHT QUESTIONS TO ASK

Avoiding hiring someone who doesn’t fit into your school’s culture saves you time, money and energy later.

Hiring the right staff is one of the most critical responsibilities for school leadership, business managers, the HR team – and for those on your staff – usually about 10 percent – who are involved in the hiring process. Every teacher, coach, food service worker, maintenance person – and literally every staff member you hire – plays an important role in shaping students’ experiences and hopefully helps ensure their safety. Yet surprisingly, research published by the national organization, the Society for Human Resource Management – or SHRM – revealed that 40 to 70% of job applicants falsify information on their resumes – a staggering statistic that should give pause to those who hire men and women who will work around children. When it comes to hiring in schools, the stakes are high. Even just one bad hire may compromise student & staff safety, school culture – and even a school’s reputation.

So how do school leaders, HR professionals – and your extended hiring team – make smarter, safer hiring decisions? The answer lies in proactive, research-backed preparation. Our Safer Recruiting & Hiring Training is designed specifically for school leaders and the hiring team to help you better evaluate candidates, ask the right questions, and identify red flags before making a hiring decision. We’ll even demonstrate how interviewing a candidate’s references may be even more strategic than the actual candidate’s interview. Why? Read on…

The Reality: Not everyone who wants to work in a school setting and around students should be hired - and schools must be prepared.

Why Standard Hiring Practices Aren’t Enough in Today’s Environment

Many schools rely solely on state and other government background checks, expecting that they provide a complete picture of a candidate. However, background checks only identify candidates who have already been designated as not suitable for work with children. Background checks do not necessarily provide full information on someone’s past negative history with another school or other youth-serving entity. This means that unless schools dig deeper during interviews & reference checks – and pay some attention to the candidate’s body language and micro-facial expressions – they could be missing critical cues that this person may not be suitable to work around your students. The challenge? Without learning the right questions to ask, how to interpret responses – and how to spot inconsistencies – schools may unknowingly hire individuals who aren’t the right fit for the school’s mission, vision, values and culture – or worse, they might be individuals who could pose even more serious risks.

How Safer Recruiting & Hiring Training Helps Schools Make Smarter Decisions

Our Safer Recruiting & Hiring Training is a 60-minute, online, asynchronous course designed specifically for Senior Leadership, Business and HR Managers – and those in other departments who are part of the hiring process. This training helps schools go beyond the basics by equipping the school hiring team with tools to better evaluate candidates and references, detect potential red flags, and make more informed hiring decisions.

Key Takeaways from the Training:

Mastering the Interview Process – Learn what specific questions to ask (and why!) to go deeper into a candidate’s motivations and past experience (and we’ll provide you with the questions to keep and demonstrate why asking the questions in a particular order, makes all the difference!)
Reading Body Language & Micro-Facial Expressions – Gain insight into when to follow up, when a candidate may be withholding information, and how to recognize possible deception.
Conducting Stronger Reference Checks – Learn how to ask targeted, strategic questions that go beyond surface-level feedback.
Understanding Why Problematic Candidates Get Hired – Explore real-world examples of how schools have missed warning signs in hiring, how to avoid these pitfalls – and see what may happen if the wrong person joins your team.
Why Background Checks Aren’t Enough – Develop a more comprehensive screening process that protects students and staff and doesn’t just rely on a government mandated criminal background screening.

By equipping schools with proven strategies for safer hiring, our training helps minimize risk, build confidence in hiring decisions and helps create a safer school environment.

💡 Are you ready to strengthen your school’s hiring process?

👉 Learn more & enroll today

Let’s work together to create safer schools—one candidate at a time.

Protect Your School. Strengthen Your Hiring Process.

client comments

"We were looking for a program that would engage our staff and build on their safety knowledge and skills. After completing the SOS ThreeSixty Boundary Training, so many of my colleagues came up to me and said how strong and effective it was. They felt informed and were able to relate directly to the content and apply it in their everyday interactions with students. This training brings home important messages and gave us such a good vocabulary and framework to sit down together and have meaningful discussions within our school about connecting with our students in a caring and healthy way."

"Their breadth of experience and understanding of our school culture was incredibly helpful in finalizing a document that was practical, actionable and would protect our students and our school."

“School safety has never been more important. Risk management and comprehensive HR policies are critical to protect the reputation and sustainability of all schools. By understanding each school’s individual culture, SOS ThreeSixty delivers unique and engaging trainings that utilize real-world examples and provide those ah-ha moments where safe practices meet reality.”

"I am thankful for the expertise I now have because of the one-on-one work I did with SOS ThreeSixty. Their engaging trainings are an incredible asset for any school leader and they always offer real-world examples that provide that ah-ha moment."

“The Newman School is known for its deep relationships and committed faculty and for those reasons, we knew taking the Boundary Training For Boarding Schools course was essential to our commitment to continue to create a safer and supportive environment for our students and faculty. We are very pleased with the information provided within the course as it is relatable to our school environment needs and common situations. We look forward in continuing our relationship with SOS ThreeSixty as part of our safety training program for our school.”

“SOS ThreeSixty’s Chaperone Training was such a very worthwhile seminar and brought so many important considerations to the forefront. As we begin our travel experiences again post-pandemic - and hope to expand those offerings for students and staff in the safest possible manner - your training session was truly invaluable."

"The work SOS ThreeSixty conducts is really important. We implemented their Boundary Training for Schools: Creating a Culture of Safety online, asynchronous course to all of our staff. I talked to every employee who completed the course and their feedback was really positive. SOS ThreeSixty is our partner in maintaining a Culture of Safety within our nurturing educational community."

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