Your building can be finished on time, your labs fully equipped, and your affiliation paperwork in order, and the school can still fail in its first year. The one variable that decides everything else is who stands in front of the classroom and who leads from the principal's office.

Every founder we've worked with at Dev'Sh Group asks some version of the same question in month one: "Where do I even find good teachers?" It's the wrong first question. The right first question is: "What am I actually hiring for, and how will I know it when I see it?" Get that clear, and the sourcing problem becomes much easier to solve.


Why New Schools Get Hiring Wrong

New schools tend to make the same three mistakes, usually because there is no HR history to learn from and every hire feels urgent.

  • Hiring for credentials alone, because a degree and a B.Ed. are easy to verify and classroom presence is not
  • Hiring in a rush to hit the academic year deadline, which means settling for whoever is available rather than who is right
  • Hiring a principal last, when leadership should almost always be one of the first three appointments

Dev'Sh Insight: We've seen founders spend six months perfecting the building and six days interviewing the principal who will run it. Flip that ratio and outcomes change dramatically.


Start With the Leadership Team, Not the Classroom Staff

A new school's first teachers will take their cues from the first principal, whether or not that principal has ever led a school before. This is why we always advise founders to lock in leadership before building out the teaching staff.


What to Look for in a Founding Principal

  • A track record of actually improving a school, not just administering one
  •  Comfort with ambiguity, new schools have no systems yet, and the principal will be building most of them
  • The ability to hire well themselves, since they will shape every appointment after theirs
  • Willingness to teach, cover a class, or sit in a parent meeting personally in year one

A principal who has never had to run a school with half the systems missing will struggle when yours has none of them yet.


Hiring Teachers: Look Past the Resume

Subject knowledge is the minimum bar, not the differentiator. Two candidates with identical degrees and identical years of experience can be a completely different bet for a founding staff. What separates them is almost always visible in how they teach a sample lesson, not in how they answer interview questions.

A Founder's Hiring Checklist

  • Ask for a 15 minute demo lesson with real students, not a scripted presentation to adults
  • Watch how they handle a question they don't immediately know the answer to
  • Check how they talk about their previous school, with specificity, or only in generalities
  • Call references and ask what the candidate struggled with, not just what they were good at
  • Assess adaptability directly, since new schools change systems constantly in year one

Dev'Sh Insight: The strongest founding teachers we've placed were rarely the most polished interviewees. They were the ones who asked the sharpest questions about the school's vision.


Building the Culture Before You Have the Numbers

  • With five or ten founding teachers, every single hire disproportionately shapes the culture the fiftieth teacher will inherit two years later. This is the part founders underestimate most.
  • Define your non negotiables in writing before the first interview, not after the first disagreement
  • Involve your founding principal in every teaching hire, even ones you are personally excited about
  • Be honest in interviews about what is still unbuilt, candidates who thrive on structure will opt out, and that's useful information
     

Where Founders Actually Find Good People

  • Job portals bring volume, not fit, particularly for founding roles. The strongest hires we've helped place came through more deliberate channels.
  • Direct referrals from principals and heads of department at respected schools nearby
  • Teacher training institutes and B.Ed. colleges, approached before placement season gets crowded
  • Alumni networks of the founder's own trust or society, when relevant
  • Education consultants and recruiters who pre screen for classroom performance, not just paperwork
     

Designing an Interview Process That Actually Predicts Performance

Most schools interview the way they were interviewed, which usually means a single conversation heavy on questions and light on evidence. For founding roles, where there is no established team to catch a bad fit, the process itself needs to be more deliberate.


A Structure That Works Well for New Schools

  • Round one: a values and mission conversation, checking alignment before assessing skill
  • Round two: a live demo lesson or leadership scenario relevant to the actual role
  • Round three: a conversation with the founding principal or founder directly, focused on how the candidate handles ambiguity
  • Reference checks conducted by phone, not just email, so tone and hesitation are audible

Each round should be assessing something different. If every round is really just a variation of "tell me about yourself," the process isn't giving founders new information, it's just repeating the first impression.


Compensation and Retention: Getting Founding Staff to Stay

Attracting good people to an unproven school is only half the challenge. Founding staff take a real risk joining an institution with no track record, and retaining them through the difficult early years requires more than a competitive salary.

  • Be transparent about compensation benchmarks early, rather than negotiating case by case with no consistent logic
  • Offer genuine growth paths, founding staff who see a future at the school are far less likely to leave once a more established school comes calling
  • Recognise that founding staff are absorbing more ambiguity and unpaid extra effort than staff at an established school, and build that into how they're supported, not just paid
  • Check in explicitly during the first, hardest year, rather than assuming silence means things are fine

Dev'Sh Insight: The schools that retain their founding staff past year two are almost always the ones that made those staff feel like co builders of something, not just early employees filling roles.


Onboarding: The Step Founders Most Often Skip

New schools are often so focused on getting through hiring that onboarding becomes an afterthought, a keys handover and a syllabus, rather than a genuine process of getting a new hire ready to succeed.

  • Give new teachers time with the founding principal before students arrive, not just a staff handbook
  • Pair new hires with a mentor, even in a founding team where everyone is technically new
  • Set clear expectations for the first month specifically, separate from the expectations for a settled year
  • Build in a structured check in at 30, 60, and 90 days rather than assuming problems will surface on their own


Red Flags Founders Should Take Seriously

Some warning signs are easy to spot on paper. Others only show up in how a candidate talks, and founders under time pressure often talk themselves out of noticing them.

  • A candidate who cannot describe a specific instance of adapting their teaching, only general philosophy
  •  Vague or evasive answers about why they left their last role
  • Discomfort with the idea of being observed teaching, even informally
  • A candidate for a leadership role who has never had to manage an underperforming staff member

The Bottom Line for Founders

Hiring for a new school is not the same discipline as hiring for an established one. There is no institutional reputation to attract talent, no existing team to absorb a weak hire, and no track record to reassure a nervous candidate. Every single appointment carries more weight than it will two years from now.

At Dev'Sh Group, we've supported founders through exactly this process, building leadership shortlists, designing demo lesson assessments, and helping new schools avoid the hiring mistakes that are expensive to undo later. If you are building your founding team and want a second set of experienced eyes on it, we would be glad to help.

🌐 www.devshgroup.com

📧 contact@devshgroup.com

📱 8796315550