Is It Inappropriate to Call Regarding a Job Interview If the Principal Emailed First? A Teacher’s Perspective
The crumbs of a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie dotted my kitchen table last Tuesday, and Lila was twisting her 4th grade class’s silicone class ring around her finger so much I thought it’d snap. She’d just pulled up the new email from the principal at Lincoln Elementary, the instructional coach job she’d applied for three weeks prior, and for 10 minutes she’d been going back and forth on whether she could pick up the phone and call.
The principal had already reached out once to confirm her interview for next Wednesday, answered her first question about parking, and signed off with a quick “looking forward to meeting you.” Lila’s only remaining question: did the team prefer a digital copy of her portfolio to share, or should she bring printed copies for everyone? It wasn’t answered anywhere in the email or original job posting, and she didn’t want to show up unprepared. But every career blog she’d read said bothering hiring managers with a call when they already emailed is rude, pushy, even inappropriate. She was this close to just guessing, and spending $20 on printing she might not need.
I get that anxiety. Three years ago, when I was applying for my current literacy coordinator role, I had a nearly identical situation. The principal emailed me to confirm my interview time, but I couldn’t find any note about whether I’d be meeting just her or the whole leadership team. I stared at my phone for two days, asked three different teacher friends what I should do, and every single one said “don’t call. She’s too busy, just email again and wait.” I ended up emailing, waiting three days for a reply that never came before the interview, and walked in not knowing I should have prepared a 15 minute presentation for the full team. It didn’t ruin my chances, but it made the first 20 minutes way more stressful than they needed to be.
A month later, I ended up asking my current principal, Maria, about this exact scenario when we were waiting for our lattes at the coffee cart outside the district office. I was curious what a principal actually thinks when a candidate calls after an initial email. She laughed and said it’s never as big a deal as candidates make it out to be. “I get 150 emails a day,” she said. “Half of them go to my junk folder, and I forget to reply to a third of the rest. If someone has a quick question, a two minute call is way faster for me than playing email tag for three days. The only time it’s annoying is when they ask something I already wrote down.”
That stuck with me, and it’s the thing I told Lila sitting at my kitchen table. The line between appropriate and inappropriate isn’t about whether you call after an email—it’s about why you’re calling, and how you do it.
I’ve seen both sides play out at our school. Two years ago, we had an opening for a 3rd grade teacher, and a candidate called Maria 24 hours after getting her confirmation email with one quick question: was she expected to prepare a sample lesson, or would it just be conversation? The original confirmation didn’t say, Maria answered in 20 seconds, and that candidate ended up getting the job. Maria later said she remembered that call as a sign the candidate cared enough to prepare well, not as an annoyance. Last year, we had a candidate call 10 minutes after getting his confirmation email to ask what the starting salary was for the role. It was listed clearly in the third bullet of the original job posting, and that left a bad impression before he even stepped foot in the building.
The concrete rules I’ve picked up over the years are pretty simple, and they’re easy to remember. If your question is already answered in the email you got, or in the original job posting, don’t call. If your question is long, complicated, or could be easily explained in a few lines of text, send an email first. Only call if you’ve already emailed your question and waited 48 hours without a reply, or you can’t find the answer anywhere else and it’s a 30-second question at most.
If you do decide to call, use this exact line to open: “Hi Principal [Last Name], this is [Your Full Name], I’m the candidate interviewing for the [open role] next Wednesday. I’m so sorry to catch you at a busy time, I just had one quick question that wasn’t in your confirmation email—do you have 30 seconds to answer it right now?” That gives them an out immediately if they’re in the middle of a meeting or parent drop-off, and it makes it clear you’re not going to waste their time. If they say they can’t talk right now, apologize, offer to send your question in an email or call back later, and hang up. No rambling, no extra questions, just that.
Lila decided to go for it. She called on her way to her son’s soccer practice, got the principal right between classes, and had her answer in 20 seconds: he preferred digital for the team to share after the interview, but a small printed portfolio for her own notes was totally fine. She texted me an hour later saying he was totally nice, didn’t sound annoyed at all, and she didn’t have to spend that $20 on unnecessary printing.
Her interview is next week, and we don’t know yet if she’ll get the role. She still has plenty to prepare, and there are a dozen other factors that will decide who gets the job. But what she doesn’t have is a week of wondering if she got the small stuff wrong. That’s the thing no one tells you about job hunting in education: the rigid “never call” rule does more harm than good most of the time. It’s not inappropriate to ask for a quick answer when you need it to prepare well. What’s inappropriate is wasting someone’s time because you didn’t bother to check the information you already have. For what it’s worth, that’s the rule that’s worked for me, and I’ve passed it on to half a dozen other friends in the last year. We’ll see how it goes for Lila.
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