Building on the success of its 2003 study, "Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High ­Quality Teachers Out of Urban Classrooms," The New Teacher Project (TNTP), with support from The Broad Foundation, investigated the methods that urban school districts use to recruit, select and hire principals. This working paper presents the basic findings of that investigation along with recommendations for how urban districts and schools can build model recruitment, screening, selection and hiring processes to obtain quality principals. Specifically, this working paper seeks to answer the following: (1) What obstacles do urban schools and districts face in hiring principals? (2) How is principal quality affected as a result? (3) What viable solutions exist to overcoming obstacles in order to hire quality principals? To better understand urban school districts' principal recruitment, selection, and hiring practices, TNTP conducted an extensive literature review of the relevant research. In the area of principal selection processes, we additionally conducted interviews and made observations of seven school districts, two university-­based leadership programs, and four district­-affiliated or national school leadership programs. In the area of principal recruitment and hiring, we investigated the phenomena described in literature by conducting resume reviews, surveys, and interviews with district staff in three urban districts, one each in the Eastern, Mid-­Atlantic, and Southern regions of the United States. Three primary findings confirmed beliefs about principal hiring long suspected by those in the field of education and unearthed obstacles not before extensively addressed: (1) There is a shortage of high-­quality principal candidates available to urban schools; (2) Urban districts appear not to be selecting the best candidates from this limited pool; and (3) Late vacancy notifications and administrative inefficiencies result in the loss of applicants and in a less effective selection process. It is hoped that urban school districts will use these findings and recommendations in combination with established leadership competency models as a starting point to improve their school leader recruitment, selection, and hiring processes and to fill critical gaps with quality principals in the years ahead.