Putting the Right People in the Right Seat

You can write the best health plans in the state, file every report on time, and train every staff member on CPR, AED, and Narcan. None of it holds if the wrong people are carrying it.

School health is infrastructure. And like any infrastructure, it's only as strong as the people who build and maintain it. This post is about how we select and build a school health team. Not how we train them - which is its own conversation - but how we find people who belong on the team in the first place.

Start with Why

Before you post a job, you have to know why your department exists. Simon Sinek's Start With Why gives the order: why we exist, how we do it, and what that produces.

Why do we work in schools? How do we serve students? What does that work actually result in for a child, a family, a campus?

Once that's clear, say it out loud. Tell people who you are and who you're looking for. When you're specific, the right people recognize themselves - and the wrong people opt out before you spend a minute recruiting them.

Core Values

The why tells people where you're going. Core values tell them how you'll travel together.

Develop them as a team - don't hand them down from a slide. The more alignment you have on core values, the more people gel and the better they understand how to work together. Core values set the rules of engagement before anyone needs them.

The Filtration Process

Most hiring mistakes are made before the interview, by skipping steps. Our filter looks like this:

Communicate a lot up front.
Text, email, call. Watch for timeliness, grammar, and fit. How someone responds before they're hired is a preview of how they'll respond after.

One screening interview.
Enough to confirm the basics.

A small project.
Even one page. You'll see how they work, how comfortable they are with online tools, how they present, and how they speak about their own work.

Letters of recommendation and references.
See what others say about them.

A second interview with the leadership team.
By this time, everyone being interviewed would do well in the position. The final decision isn't about weeding out - it's about fit.

Right Person, Right Seat

Getting the right person on the team is half the job. Putting them in the right seat is the other half.

Only place people in roles they're both willing and suited for. If someone won't do a task, placing them there anyway wastes their time and yours - and in school health, an unwilling person in a critical seat is a risk, not just an inefficiency.

Pareto's Law

Not everyone should do everything. We use Pareto's principle to define our roles: find the 20 percent of skills a person is really strong in that produce 80 percent of the results.

Then hire to complement. One person's strong 80 should be the next hire's weak 20, and the other way around. That's how you build a strong, balanced team instead of a team of identical generalists.

Within that person's 20 percent of strength, give them freedom to explore, grow, try new things, and bring ideas back to the table. This is why our team has ownership and specialization in each area.

Check-In Early and Often

At six weeks, we hold a formal check-in.

What did you expect? What are you seeing? What do you like, what don't you, and where can we improve - on both sides?

Six weeks matters because, in our experience, it tells you a lot. Six weeks is a strong indicator of three months. Three months of nine months. Nine months of three school years. And three years of nine.

After that, everyone has ongoing one-on-ones with someone above them. Weekly is ideal. Every two weeks works. Monthly at the latest. It's a temperature check - where are you, what are you working on, what are you struggling with, what are you enjoying. It keeps leadership personal.

An Honest Close

We won't get this right every time. No one does. But a clear why, shared values, a real filter, defined roles, and steady check-ins give you a strong starting point - and a team that can actually carry the system you're building.

Want the full framework?

Join us at the APLUS+ Conference for "From Compliance to Care: How to Build a School Health Department From the Ground Up," October 21-23, 2026.