The Office of Human Resources and Workforce Strategy’s Andrea Burton, talent acquisition specialist, and Kristen Martin, senior recruiter, recently co-presented at the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources national conference in Orlando, Florida. Their presentation, “Faculty Recruitment: From Feedback to Foundation,” focused on a new faculty recruiting process.
The College and University Professional Association is the leading association for human resource professionals working in higher education. Its national conference welcomes professionals across the country to share their most innovative human resource ideas.
“Andrea and Kristen worked collaboratively with our academic campus partners to re-envision how we recruit faculty to Boise State,” said Jordy LePiane, senior director of talent acquisition. “They spent months listening to academic units, surveying campus hiring committees and sifting through data to develop real-world solutions to be more competitive in faculty recruiting.”
Boise State competes with other institutions for top faculty talent and, often, with a limited pool of candidates. Burton and Martin presented a change process model that involves identifying a problem, gathering insights and feedback, reviewing data and analyzing feedback, determining and implementing new processes, and delivering a new process to campus.
During the analysis phase, they worked with Boise State’s Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning graduate students. The students reviewed the collected data as part of their project work and offered four primary recommendations: to distinguish faculty recruiting and hiring process from staff processes; ensure human resource tools and assistance were well communicated; provide clear user guides; and optimize all tools and assistance for only one intended use (faculty or staff).
Burton and Martin worked to update hiring and onboarding processes, make content more engaging for candidates and align recruiting with the overall mission of the university. They developed a new faculty recruitment website as a guide for campus personnel about the faculty recruitment process. In addition, the faculty careers website helps to attract more candidates and is now human resources’ fifth most frequented webpage.