Most principals know the feeling. You've interviewed a handful of solid candidates. Qualified, certified, would probably do the job well. But something keeps you from making the call. You're not quite sure any of them are the right fit. Maybe the next application will be the one. So, you wait.
Meanwhile, your front runner candidate accepts a job in a bordering school district. The school year then starts with a substitute in that specific classroom.
That's FOBO, better known as, "Fear of a better option." And it's one of the most common and costly hiring mistakes in K-12 recruitment, largely because nobody truly identifies it.
Jamie West, Community Engagement Strategist at Red Rover and a former district-level recruiter at Lake County Schools in Florida, has watched FOBO play out in two distinct ways and says most people only recognize one of them.
The first is the principal holding out for a unicorn. Quality candidates are in the pool, but the search keeps going. This is the version that often leads to what some in K-12 HR are starting to call Walking Dead Season, that stretch of summer when districts realize the unicorn isn't coming, and the strongest candidates have already accepted offers elsewhere. The second is the opposite: a principal is so afraid of losing a candidate that they skip the work and hire too fast, not truly understanding what they're getting in their new employee.
"If they're in survival mode as opposed to CEO mode,” says Jamie. “They'll offer the position to the first certified and/or qualified person they meet, without truly evaluating that person. To me, that's like gambling. You never know what you're going to get."
Both versions are rooted in the same anxiety, and both can lead to negative outcomes. One action based on fear presents a classroom without a qualified teacher. The other fills it with the wrong person, now on contract, guiding our students.
In a decentralized district where principals are the primary decision makers when it comes to hiring staff, FOBO hits differently. Principals are running schools, managing employees, handling discipline, and communicating with parents. Hiring is one more thing on a very long list of priorities. When a classroom has been covered by a substitute for months, the temptation to either hold out on hiring or rush to fill the role is real and completely understandable.
It's also worth being honest about what thejob market for teachers actually looks like. If you have a candidate who is certified, clears a background check, and checks seven out of eight boxes, that's typically a direct hire worth moving forward.
"Isn't that an 87%? Isn't that a B-plus? If somebody is that far in the green, hire them. Give them a chance. A lot of people just fear giving chances to people or think there's this perfect unicorn out there who is going to be your next rookie teacher of the year. And that's not always going to happen," said Jamie West.
"We have waited for a unicorn candidate and got burned,” says Danielle Carter, who is Director of Human Resources at Grayslake Community High School District 127 and knows the cost of waiting firsthand. “The timeline bit us. They left us. And we settled. We decided as a district three years ago, we're never settling again. We will do a long-term sub. We will do an overload if we have to for a staff member, but we will never settle again because what settling has led to is just not good matches, not the best person in front of a child.”
The antidote to FOBO isn't just moving faster. It's building a process that gives you genuine confidence in your decisions so that you're neither rushing nor stalling.
Get other people in the room. Bias is harder to act on when more perspectives are present. A principal who is over-indexing on a candidate because they click personally is much more likely to catch their bias when someone else is in the interview. Panel interviews can slow FOBO down in a healthy way.
Use school visits or shadowing for close calls. When two candidates are genuinely difficult to separate, invite each of them to spend time in the building on a regular school day. Jamie recommends this approach specifically for its ability to cut through personal preference.
"We have a lot of principals who will do school tours or shadowing for a little bit. That's when you can figure out which person is a better fit for your school and your students, not a better fit personality-wise that you like. There's a difference there. Seeing that potential employee interact with others on your campus is going to help you filter out that bias," said Jamie West.
Communicate continuously with candidates you want. If you're worried a strong candidate is going to accept something elsewhere before you're ready to make an offer, stay in contact. Build the relationship. A candidate who feels genuinely wanted is less likely to jump at the first offer that comes across their phone.
Set a clear internal deadline. Danielle structures her hiring calendar around board meeting windows, targeting three weeks from post to close. Having a defined timeline keeps the process from drifting and signals to candidates that this district runs a tight, organized ship.
Every day a classroom goes without a permanent teacher is a day that affects students, strains colleagues covering the gap, and puts a principal further behind in a hiring cycle that only gets harder the longer it runs. By the time Walking Dead Season hits in earnest, the pool isn't what it was in April or May, and the urgency to fill a seat starts to override the discipline that good hiring requires.
If the unicorn never shows up, the answer isn't to keep waiting.
"If we don't find that unicorn, we're going to go internal and figure it out until we find that person. We won't leave a classroom in a lurch," said Danielle Carter.
FOBO is a solvable problem. It doesn't require a new system or a bigger budget. It requires a shift in how hiring managers think about the decision in front of them, and the willingness to trust a process well enough to act on it.