Traditionally, in Germany, the centralized state school administration oversees the staffing of its schools. Specifically, the administration assigns new teachers to designated schools. During the last decade, some German "Bundeslander" have established new procedures for hiring new teachers. Since 1997 the Bundesland "Nordrhein-Westfalen" (NRW) has implemented a new recruitment system. Now local schools can advertise their own teacher vacancies and select among candidates. The purpose of this is to support the school in developing and realizing a special "school profile": a certain pedagogical programme that is distinctive for a school. The results of the empirical study show that the schools in general appreciate the new staffing procedure very much. They like it because now the school has the opportunity to select among different candidates on the basis of a personal appraisal. Support for the school profile seems to be not so important. So this innovative procedure is very well accepted--but not for the reason it was originally installed for. (Contains 4 tables and 9 notes.)