Published on: September 11, 2026
A NABITA Tip of the Week by Elizabeth Trayner, Ed.D., Araiña Muñiz, M.B.A., Josie Hoover, DMin., SHRM-CP, and Chanc’e Moody, LMSW
Districts and institutions seeking experienced behavioral intervention professionals face a highly competitive hiring landscape. These experts must be able to navigate procedural frameworks, trauma-informed practices, and institutional dynamics from day one. How can institutions attract top talent from such a small hiring pool?
The solution is to expand beyond narrow hiring models and focus on competency-based evaluations. This requires challenging the assumption that prior experience is the only predictor of long-term success.
NABITA and its partner association, ATIXA, recently explored this topic during a joint members-only Talking BITs/Time with IX event. Below are key takeaways and practical strategies to help behavioral intervention teams (BITs) and school-based behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) teams turn insights into action.
The Field Has Outgrown Traditional Hiring Pipelines
Focusing solely on direct experience and undervaluing transferable skills, such as adaptability and leadership potential, may exclude strong candidates. Requiring prior BIT/BTAM experience narrows the hiring pool to individuals already in those roles, increasing competition for openings. That narrow lens, combined with the field’s high rates of burnout and turnover, creates a sustainability problem.
While hiring experienced practitioners may feel safer from a risk and threat management standpoint, it could limit innovation, reduce intellectual diversity, and contribute to the staffing shortages that schools and campuses already face. Many of the strongest professionals enter BIT/BTAM work from adjacent fields. Disciplines like student conduct, human resources, case management, public health, social work, law enforcement, military service, counseling, and community advocacy cultivate directly relevant skills.
Transferable Skills are Better Predictors of Success
While technical skills can be taught, competencies such as professional judgment, communication, and emotional regulation are harder to teach. Competency-based hiring allows for the examination of how a practitioner thinks and relates to others. Institutions that value procedural familiarity may risk underestimating the interpersonal competencies required for effective BIT/BTAM work.
Successful professionals in high-stress roles involving crises, threats, safety risks, conflict, and exposure to trauma rely on communication, critical thinking, rapport-building, and emotional management. These are key skills in this work, where high-stakes decision-making happens in an instant. These professionals are adaptable and accustomed to learning new systems, navigating unfamiliar environments, and integrating varied perspectives.
Avoid Rewarding Institutional Sameness
Many hiring processes and search committees gravitate toward candidates who already understand K-12 or higher education, use familiar terminology, or mirror traditional career pathways in student affairs and conduct. While institutional familiarity can create short-term comfort, it may not build stronger teams and may limit a team’s problem-solving capacity.
BIT/BTAM work increasingly intersects with broader institutional issues involving employee well-being, mental health, disability access, workplace culture, public safety, crisis management, and organizational risk. Teams benefit when they include professionals who bring varied operational perspectives rather than identical professional backgrounds.
Districts and institutions that hire only from traditional pathways may limit their problem-solving capacity. Expertise from different fields can strengthen responses, as these professionals approach challenges differently than teams trained within the same system.
Retention is Part of Hiring Strategy
BIT/BTAM professionals often work in environments marked by emotional exhaustion, institutional scrutiny, political pressure, and complex workloads. When institutions fail to invest in professional development and sustainable support, turnover becomes almost guaranteed. This creates another hiring challenge: institutions aren’t just competing for talent; they’re competing for talent that isn’t burned out and can commit to staying for the long term.
To support retention and prevent burnout, districts and institutions must create conditions for sustainable career growth, continuing education, mentorship opportunities, internal advancement, cross-training, and leadership development. Cultivating internal talent may reduce long-term hiring instability more effectively than relying on recruitment.
Programs like NABITA’s Mentor Match and Community Connections support the field through 1:1 and small-group mentorship, creating networks for individuals looking to advance their skills and build new relationships.
To ensure effective staffing for behavioral intervention roles, institutions should prioritize building internal systems that can develop and retain strong professionals over time, rather than focusing solely on finding experienced candidates.
Want to build a stronger, more sustainable BIT/BTAM team without limiting your candidate pool? TNG Consulting helps institutions rethink hiring, onboarding, retention, and organizational structure to develop high-performing teams equipped for increasingly complex environments.
Contact inquiry@tngconsulting.com to get started.