Digitization can make a huge difference in attracting talent to your institution.
The HigherEd hiring process is historically slow and difficult. In fact, according to a LinkedIn survey, the position with the longest interview process is professor, with a 60-day average interview process. This slow time-to-hire and long application process isn’t unique to faculty positions, however. Many institutions have non-digitized, non-centralized hiring processes—and that can seriously impact the talent your institution attracts.
To help you think about the impact of speeding up your hiring process, we spoke to internal PeopleAdmin expert Ircka West about her personal experience with HigherEd hiring.
Don’t underestimate what a streamlined process can do!
Ircka West is a Solution Engineer at PeopleAdmin, so she has in-depth knowledge of the HigherEd Platform. But Ircka also used to work in HigherEd—so she’s also had experience on the applicant side of HR systems.
“Hiring processes are so slow on most HigherEd campuses. It’s exhausting for applicants—almost every position has a long, drawn-out process. Applying for corporate roles is so much quicker and easier that it’s drawing away applicants from colleges and universities,” said Ircka.
“When I was applying for positions in HigherEd, I was living in Houston. There are so many colleges and universities to choose from there, so I was sure I would stay in HigherEd. Unfortunately, every application process took hours or days. Often, I had to do it all in one sitting—and I noticed that with corporate roles I applied to, I could start and stop the application without having to re-do any work. For some HigherEd applications, I had to submit my I-9 documents three times in three different systems.”
Ircka noted that HigherEd institutions have enough competition already—they shouldn’t add the deterrent of an arduous application process into the mix.
“Colleges and universities aren’t just competing with other institutions for faculty, but with the entire corporate world for staff and administrative positions. HigherEd often offers slightly lower pay and less flexibility than the corporate world, so when you add on the difficulty of the actual application process, it’s just one more deterrent for job-seekers.
An institution that has a streamlined process—one that’s intuitive, simple, and doesn’t take too much time—that can make all the difference for an applicant. When I first heard about PeopleAdmin, all I could think was how much HigherEd needed this product.”
If you’re interested in taking your applicant process to the next level and keeping top talent in the world of HigherEd, you can schedule a demo with PeopleAdmin today.