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When Pamela Barkett began her role as director of employment in June of this
year, the Office of Human Resources gave her a challenging assignment: to
redesign the staff recruitment process for the University.
Barkett has taken the challenge and expects many of the improvements to the
process to be in place by the end of the year.
Barkett comes to Carolina from Johns Hopkins University, where she was the
staff/labor relations and employment manager. While at Johns Hopkins, she
gained valuable experience in the development and implementation of a
completely redesigned employment process, including a web-based recruitment
system, and that was a strong factor in selecting her for the director's
position.
"We're delighted to have Pam joining us as the director of employment," said
Laurie Charest, associate vice chancellor for Human Resources. "Her strong
experience in employment, employee relations, and information systems in a
large research institution will be invaluable as we move forward with
improvements to our own recruitment process."
Over the past two years, the University has averaged more than 600 active
vacancies each month. Among other factors, the tight labor market in the
Triangle has contributed significantly to the difficulty in filling positions
at the University. Barkett believes that employment process improvements that
decrease the processing time for recruitment can greatly improve the
University's ability to attract and hire qualified applicants.
"Applicants expect a quick turnaround when they apply," she said. "If we can't
respond to their interest in employment at UNC fast enough, they'll be snatched
up by another employer before our hiring managers have the opportunity to even
contact them."
Improving the recruitment process involves system-wide change. "You cannot look
at a single aspect of the recruitment process and single it out for action,"
Barkett said. "A change in one part of the process impacts other elements of
the system which requires a change in another, then another.
"We're looking at revisions to the entire process to better meet the needs of
the University, our hiring managers, and our applicants, both TOPS applicants
and externals."
Barkett also described these upcoming employment process changes:
* Applicants will be able to submit applications electronically by e-mail and
eventually complete the application online rather than submit a hard copy.
* Applicants will apply to specific positions of their interest rather than
submitting a general application for a classification.
* Departments will be able to electronically submit the recruitment form (HR1)
through the HRIS system.
* Departments will be able to increase the position information available on
the job postings to more closely meet their departmental needs.
* Recruiters will provide support to specific departments rather than recruit
by job classifications.
"UNC has a very paper-intensive process," Barkett said. "The more we can move
away from that model, initially by accepting applications submitted by e-mail,
the more we can increase the efficiency and the quality of our referrals and
the more we can decrease the turnaround time of the entire recruitment process
and related costs."
In the current system, individuals submit applications to the University
typically without indicating jobs they prefer. Recruiters in the Employment
Department then screen applications based on qualifications and forward them to
hiring departments.
The Employment Department has about 3,000 active applications on file. This
makes it difficult to sort through and find a sufficient number of
applications, which have the specific departmental skill set, to forward to
hiring departments. In many cases, applicants may not be interested in working
in particular departments and/or job classifications, or may have already found
other positions with different organizations.
In a position-driven application process, applicants are more actively involved
in the recruitment because they actually select the specific position or
positions in which they are interested. This should increase the quality of
referrals and the likelihood of finding a better match for the hiring
department, while also reducing the extended hiring periods and job turnover.
Other changes to the employment process depend on a change to submitting the
recruitment form (known as the HR-1) through the Human Resources Information
System (HRIS). This is anticipated to be available before year-end. In the
current process, the requisition form goes through several Human Resources
departments for verification of information. Once the Employment Department
receives the HR-1, the data is transferred through various systems to generate
the job posting. When the change to the electronic HR-1 submission is
accomplished, several steps will be eliminated from the process because the
information will already exist within the HRIS system.
When electronic requisitions are in place, the hiring departments will be able
to include more specific position information relevant to their departmental
needs. This is also anticipated to be when the Employment Department will move
to the position-driven application process.
For now, the recruiters have begun cross-training in classifications to prepare
for their move to specific campus departmental assignments. The new model will
increase the recruiters' understanding of the hiring needs of their assigned
departments and thereby enable them to develop a stronger working relationship
with the hiring department.
"A department-focused process is really a customer-driven process," Barkett
said. "Each of the departments on this campus is our customer. The more we know
about their mission and goals the more we are able to better understand their
hiring needs, so that we can meet their expectations.
"We can accomplish this more effectively when we have recruiters partnering in
consultation with departments."
Human Resources facilitators in departments will receive additional information
regarding the organizational change in employment during their August meeting.
Announcements regarding changes in the employment process will be made as those
changes take effect during the fall.
A personal glimpse
Pamela Barkett and her husband Jake have a combined family of five adult
children and, as she describes him, a "precious" grandson. Her family has been
her first priority, and she anticipates their children will relocate to North
Carolina over the next several years.
The second priority in Barkett's life has been her education, which she earned
on a part-time basis while raising her children as a single mother and working
full-time on her career in human resources. She earned a bachelor's degree in
business management from Towson University in 1996, and a master's degree in
organizational development & human resources from Johns Hopkins University
in 2001.
Barkett and her husband are college sports enthusiasts, avid bowlers and
beginning golfers who greatly enjoy travel, especially to the beaches of North
Carolina.
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