TABLE OF CONTENTS FRONT PAGE NEXT ARTICLE PREVIOUS ARTICLE
More and more University departments face a nagging problem: they can't find workers to fill vacant jobs.
There are more than 500 vacancies in SPA positions, equal to almost 10 percent of the campus workforce, said Laurie Charest, associate vice chancellor for human resources.
"With over 500 vacancies, that's a lot of work that falls on other people," Charest said.
Vacancies for EPA position are not as large. As of March 1, there were 106 vacancies on the faculty (a 4.4 percent rate) and 11 vacancies in non-faculty EPA (a less than 2 percent vacancies rate).
The key reason for all the SPA vacancies is simple economics. The Triangle's sizzling economy has made it hard to find qualified people who need work. Unemployment in the Triangle is a tiny 1.4 percent, while in Orange County, unemployment is around 1 percent.
"The economy is just hot," said Drake Maynard III, senior director for human resources administration. "What's happening now in the Triangle is that employers are just swapping employees."
Making the vacancy issue even more difficult to solve is the fact that the University is growing and therefore adding more jobs. The combination of scant unemployment and an increasing number of spaces to fill has made it tough to cut the vacancy rate.
The human resources staff has undertaken a substantial push to recruit people and close the vacancy gap, Maynard said.
That push started with hiring more people to do recruiting, including attending job fairs at colleges, community colleges and universities to woo graduates to come work at Carolina.
Other efforts include advertising in local and national newspapers and improving the recruiting web site.
"We're being pretty aggressive in trying to get a hold of people," Maynard said.
Among the biggest needs is in information technology. People with computer skills are in demand, especially in Research Triangle Park, and keeping good people is hard.
In a booming economy such as the Triangle's, Carolina's lower pay scale adds to the recruiting challenge, Maynard said.
"We're not going to go wallet-to-wallet with Glaxco Wellcome," he said. "The salary situation is not helping, but it's not making matters worse either."
But working at Carolina has advantages not measured in paychecks. Those advantages mean that all University employees in effect become recruiters.
"Word of mouth still is a very effective recruiting tool for us," Maynard said. "What we have to sell is the whole experience of working at the nation's oldest public university and a major research center known around the world. The opportunity to come and work at a place where you can continue your education and enjoy all the cultural benefits of a major university appeals to plenty of people."
To UNC-CH Home Page