Is It Inappropriate to Call a Principal About a Job Interview After They Reached Out Via Email?
The steam from Lila’s oat latte curled up into the face of her phone, which lay face-up on the bakery table between us. She’d been twisting her paper napkin into a tight rope for five minutes, ever since she pulled up the email she’d received two days earlier from the principal at Lincoln Elementary. It was the first response she’d gotten from any district after three months of sending out 14 applications, and it said simply: We’ve received your materials and will schedule interviews the first week of next month. We’ll be in touch with a time by the Friday before. “My mom says I should call to introduce myself,” she said, picking at the edge of the napkin. “Says it’ll show I really want the job. But my college supervisor said calling is rude when they already emailed you. That I’ll look pushy. So what is it? Is it inappropriate?”
I’m a 4th grade teacher, I had Lila as a student teacher last fall, and I’ve sat on my school’s hiring committee for the last four years. I told her I know exactly how this feels. Twelve years ago, I was in her exact spot: my lease was ending in 30 days, I was working 20 hours a week at a downtown coffee shop to cover tuition, and I’d applied for a 2nd grade opening at a school 20 minutes from my apartment. The principal emailed me saying she’d get back to me by the end of the month. End of the month came and went, four days passed, and I had my phone in my hand ready to dial her office every time I had a 10-minute break between customer orders.
My mentor at the time, Mrs. Henderson, pulled me aside after a field trip one day and asked what had me so tense. When I told her, she didn’t give me a straight yes or no right away. She just asked what I planned to say when the principal picked up. I fumbled through an answer: I just want to remind her I’m here, that I really want the job. She laughed and said, “So you’re calling just to make yourself less anxious, not because you actually have something to ask her.” That line has stuck with me ever since.
After years of being on both sides of the hiring table, I’ve learned that question of whether to call doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer, but it almost always comes back to that line Mrs. Henderson taught me. Let me tell you what I’ve seen from the hiring side. Last year, we had a candidate call two days after we sent that exact “we’ll be in touch” email, just to introduce himself and say how excited he was about the job. Our principal was in the middle of an emergency IEP meeting about a student who’d been bringing weapons to school, and the front office put the call through by mistake. He took it for 30 seconds, said he’d call back, and after that, he couldn’t even remember the guy’s name—just that he’d interrupted an incredibly high-stakes meeting. We already had 25 qualified candidates to sort through, and that 30-second call left a bad enough first impression that we didn’t invite him for an interview. It wasn’t personal, it was just bad timing.
But that same hiring round, we had another candidate who emailed us to confirm her interview time, and our garbage district spam filter ate the email. She waited a full day, didn’t hear anything, and called the front office to check. The secretary connected her to me, we sorted out the time in 90 seconds, she came in and interviewed really well, and she’s now teaching 1st grade at our school. That call was totally fine, because she had a specific, time-sensitive problem that email hadn’t solved.
That’s the rule of thumb I tell every new teacher who asks me this question. If a principal has already reached out to you via email, they’ve already signaled that email is their preferred way to communicate. Default to that first—it lets them answer when they have a free minute, instead of dropping whatever crisis they’re handling to talk to you. Only call if one of three things is true: First, you emailed a specific question and waited three full business days and haven’t gotten a reply. Second, you have an urgent, time-sensitive issue that changes your availability for the interview—like you just got called in for a required certification training you can’t reschedule, or a family emergency came up—and you need a quick answer that can’t wait for an email back. Third, the original job posting specifically lists a phone number and says to call with questions. If none of those are true, calling is more likely to work against you than for you.
That thing your mom says about calling showing initiative? I get where that comes from, but it was true 30 years ago, when most hiring was done over the phone and principals had more empty space in their day. Now, principals are responsible for so much more than they used to be—they’re managing tight budgets, handling endless state compliance reports, covering classes when a teacher calls out sick, mediating parent conflicts—their day is scheduled down to the minute, and an unexpected call is almost always an interruption. Initiative these days looks like respecting their process, not forcing your way into their day.
Lila thought about that for a minute, then asked what she should do right then, since it was Wednesday and they’d said they’d get back by Friday. I told her to wait until end of day Friday. If she hadn’t heard anything by then, send a short, two-sentence email: “I’m just reaching out to check in on my application for the 1st grade opening at Lincoln Elementary. I know this time of year is incredibly busy, so please let me know if you need any additional materials from me.” That’s it. No long paragraphs about how much you love the school, no pushing for an answer right now. If you don’t hear back from that email after two more business days, then you can call the front office to check if they received it.
She ended up doing exactly that. End of day Friday rolled around, no email, she sent that note, and by 3 pm that same day, the principal wrote back. They’d had an unexpected state testing lock-down that pushed all interviews back a week, she’d forgotten to add Lila to the bulk email letting candidates know, and she attached a new interview time right there. Lila had her interview earlier this week, and she texted me this morning that it went really well, but she’s still waiting to hear back.
I still get questions about this every few months from new teachers gearing up for their first job search. Most of the time, the answer isn’t that calling is inherently inappropriate—it’s that most of the time, when you’re itching to call after a principal has already emailed you, it’s just anxiety talking, not a real need. Waiting is awful, I get that. But rushing the process almost never helps. Lila’s still waiting, and that’s okay. It’s how almost all job searches go.
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