What a Good Interview Is Really Trying to Find Out

A practical interview guide for school hiring managers – and a peek behind the curtain for teachers.

In my previous article, What Makes Great Teachers Stay?, I shared a few interview questions around motivation, fit, and retention. This time, I want to go deeper into what I listen for in an interview, shaped by what I’ve learned from some brilliant recruitment teams along the way.

What should you ask a teacher in an interview?
What should you listen for?

And how do you tell if someone has really done the work…
rather than just giving a well-rehearsed answer?

Prepared answers are normal. In fact, a good candidate usually prepares. What matters is whether the answer is supported by real experience. That’s where follow-up questions become useful.

For teachers reading this: This is mainly written for school hiring managers, but consider it a peek behind the curtain. Instead of memorising “perfect answers,” you can see what recruiters and school leaders are trying to learn, and how both sides figure out whether there could be a good fit.

Simon Sinek once compared interviewing to dating, and I couldn’t agree more.
The idea isn’t to put on a performance. Prepare, of course, but be yourself (as cheesy as it sounds).
The right match should fit who we really are, shouldn’t it?

Finding the Real Fit Beyond What’s on the CV

I’ve worked in agency and in-house recruitment across education, professional services and construction engineering, recruiting across China, Australia, Taiwan and the US.

One funny side effect of being on a Working Holiday Visa in Australia was having to change employers regularly, which meant interviewing for recruiter jobs again and again (about every six months). I visited more recruitment agencies than I ever intended to and got plenty of practice seeing interviews from the candidate side too.

Not exactly how I planned to sharpen my interview skills, but it worked.

Along the way, I learned from some excellent recruitment teams and saw what happens when the right person lands in the right role. Across different industries and countries, the core of the job was the same: it’s about people, and finding the right person for the role and the hiring manager.

Sure, people need the skills to do the job, but hiring managers rarely hire on skills alone. We’re also trying to understand:

• Will this person fit our team and working style?
• Can I trust them in front of students, parents or clients?
• How do they respond to constructive feedback?
• Do they actually want THIS job?
• Are they likely to stay?

And this is where a rehearsed answer can fool us.
Someone can sound confident and say all the right things, but I’m more interested in what they have actually done.

Give me a real example. What happened? What did you do? Why? What happened after?
That’s usually where you can tell whether the polished answers have real depth behind them.

Should We Let AI Automate Candidate Interviews?

With all the hype around AI-led interviews, my first thought was, “Oh yeah, automating candidate interviews would save us so much time. I can see that’s where the future is!”

While writing this article, I thought a lot about what happens in a successful interview and realised there’s much more going on:

We probe, notice how someone responds, build trust, and represent our team and culture.

I can remember candidates telling me, “I decided to join the company because you sounded so happy working there.” Personally, I’ve also chosen to join companies partly because I wanted to work with the interviewer.

AI can definitely help with the backend, but for me, the interview is still one of the most human parts of recruitment. It gives both sides a feel for who they might actually be working with.

Do We Need Someone Who Matches 100% of the Job Brief?

When I first started interviewing candidates at a recruitment agency in Perth, mainly recruiting for law firms, I thought my job was to find someone who matched 100% of the job brief.

Over time, guided by more experienced recruiters and real hiring results, my approach changed. I started valuing a candidate’s attitude and growth potential as much as (if not more than) their existing skills. Some of our most successful hires only had the fundamentals, but their earnestness, conscientiousness, and hunger to learn helped them thrive.

While some hard-skill gaps can be taught, core mindsets and character are usually harder to change.

So, if someone doesn’t tick every box, that’s okay. I would ask: Which gaps can be trained?
Does the hiring manager have the time and resources to train them? And which qualities are needed from day one?

(In Part 2, I’ll get into the practical side: the 30-Minute Teacher Interview Framework, the questions I actually ask, what to listen for, how I probe vague answers, and a simple Candidate Scorecard.)

About the Author: Christine Lu

Christine is a Business Development Manager at Gold Star TEFL Recruitment. She first joined Gold Star in 2015 and spent four years working in international teacher recruitment before moving to Australia, where she spent about two years in recruitment. She has since worked in the English-language education sector with the British Council and recruited remotely for companies in the US and Taiwan, before re-joining Gold Star in 2026.