USER and Human Resources join to improve recruiting, hiring

Staff from the University Services Renewal Project’s (USER) recruiting and hiring team and Human Resources (formerly Personnel Services) have joined together to improve UW recruiting and hiring services by making policy and procedure information, forms and processes available via the Web.

This new partnership began when the two groups met and discovered that many of the initiatives planned by each of them were overlapping. A joint team was formed to work together on developing products and services via the Web that will benefit hiring units as well as employees, according to Linda Barrett, USER Recruiting and Hiring Task Group former chair.

Joint team members working on the project from USER are Mary Melanson, chair, Engineering; Jennie Webster, Human Resources; David Girts, UW Police; Linda Smith, Rehabilitation Medicine; Chris Cunnington, Computer Science and Engineering; Mary Grembowski, Social Work; Sarah Mann, Facilities Services; and Rosemond Scott, Purchasing. Members from Human Resources include Linda Anderson, Caye Boosalis, Darlene Feikema, Mark Honda and Jan Northrop.

Human Resources recently announced its new “Guide to Hiring Classified Staff,” which can be found at http://www.washington.edu/admin/personnel. This guide takes viewers through the steps of hiring an employee at the University and will be updated as the joint team develops additional products. The team is currently working on a job description template that can be downloaded to assist hiring officials in developing job descriptions. The template will be used for both classified and professional staff positions.

Another product under development is a job advertising template that is intended to shorten the time between submitting a personnel request and placing a job advertisement. The template will provide employment offices with information from a single source that some now must gather from many sources. It will include information such as where the job should be advertised and what information ads should contain. The joint team is working to get these products available on the Web this spring.

These two templates are building blocks for the future creation of an electronic request to hire, which will replace the paper personnel request form, Barrett said. The format and content of this electronic version will be designed by the recruiting and hiring team so that it will be ready to hand off to the USER programming team to develop. As an initial step, a template will be developed that can be filled out online and printed for approval signatures. Later, it will be replaced by a completely electronic version.

The team also is creating a Web site to access and print classified and contract classified staff job titles, job codes, job descriptions and pay ranges. Hiring units and current employees will be able to look at all of the possible classified and contract classified job descriptions from their own desktop computer rather than going to a copy center and getting copies of individual job descriptions. The launching of this Web site also will be announced in the spring.

In addition to the Web Guide to Hiring, Human Resources announced the rollout of its new equipment process using upgraded Resumix software on Jan. 1, which scans and stores resumes and matches applicants with job descriptions. The program makes it easier to submit applications and do reviews and referrals. The recruiting and hiring team will be working with Human Resources to ensure that future USER developments will be compatible with this system in order to accomplish the USER project’s goal of single entry of data.

“The formation of the joint team from USER Recruiting and Hiring and Human Resources is making it possible to create better products and processes through the exchange of ideas from both the hiring unit perspective and the employment office perspective,” Barrett said. Announcements of new products will be communicated through UWeek, e-mail and the Web.

On March 15 the recruiting and hiring team will be sending a survey across campus to measure what resources people currently use and what they would like to have available to make the process more efficient and effective. ¶