The faculty hiring process at many universities is arduous for both the candidates and the search committee members. At Rice University, the decentralized nature of faculty recruitment processes, the relatively small number of faculty hires each year, and constantly changing committee membership has historically left each department to design their own search committee process.
Dr. George Phillips, the Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor in BioSciences, has served on many search committees during his tenure at Rice and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Last year, when I was the chair of the committee, we manually organized and reviewed 400 applications that arrived by mail and email. We used OWL-Space to organize the files manually, led by staff members Monica Roberts and Susan Merz, and helped by a cadre of undergraduate student workers to shuffle all those files around and manage the ranked lists. I knew it was [a waste of time and resources], but we couldn’t change anything at the time. This year, I started searching for solutions early.” After talking with various groups around the campus, Phillips heard about the OnBase workflows.
“I met Eddie Heard and Brian Cole and we talked about what their system could do and our requirements; it seemed like a good fit. But our search committee was encouraged to wait for the university’s new faculty hiring system instead of jumping into an interim solution. It is a good thing we didn’t wait, because the new system was not ready for us to use in the fall.”
Phillips said the committee was pleased with the OnBase team’s responsive and helpful attitudes as the committee “kicked the tires” in the new process before sending the link out with job opening announcements. The BioSciences search committee processed 450 applications this year in much less time than the 400 applications they reviewed in 2013. OnBase auto-assembled all the application documents and references into a single PDF packet for each candidate. “The system worked really well for us, and we estimate the time the department spent on handling the CV’s and data organization administrative time went from 1750 hours last year –when we did it using OWL-Space and organizing things manually– to about 80 hours managing the docs and handling exceptions this year. This was a huge savings of department staff time and hassle.”
VPAA Liaison for Rice Faculty Search Committees Seeking Paperless Solution
As more Rice faculty search committees move away from paper-based processes, a need has arisen for paperless systems. Assistant Vice Provost Celeste Boudreaux said the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs became aware of committee members’ need for a central liaison. “Our office is evolving to meet the needs of the faculty,” said Boudreaux. “The relatively small number of Tenure/Tenure Track (TTT) and Non-Tenure Track (NTT) faculty hires makes it relatively easy for us to help departments determine how they want to conduct their search, how to find a system that can do what they want, and even how to make a specific system do what they want – as far as it possibly can.”
Unlike staff hires, faculty applicants often submit reference information with their application documents, and references are collected by the committee before the application review begins. In addition, each person on the search committee usually needs access to PDFs, although some departments still use paper. “Instead of a group of people sitting around a conference table for hours as they pore over identical binders of applications, the current committee members can choose to review electronic application documents in different time zones and locations,” explained Boudreaux. “This fall, the search committees for about five faculty positions began the selection process using OnBase as an interim solution for TTT positions. We are working with Human Resources (HR) to finalize the new Rice Faculty Hiring System that will be rolled out in March 2015.”
The Rice Faculty Hiring System will include a comprehensive process for committee members to use, from the job posting through the hiring process, and a feature to auto-populate fields on the candidate’s application using the Vitae dossier service. It will also serve as the online hiring proposal and approval system. Boudreaux is enthusiastic about the benefits of the new system. “None of these options are currently available in OnBase or collaboration software used by some faculty search committees.” However, the new faculty hiring system will only manage TTT selections at first, so search committees that review applications for postdocs and NTT faculty positions may still find the OnBase workflow to be helpful.
The first two departments turning to OnBase as a solution for the paper-based process were Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). These departments were familiar with OnBase as a business solution for document imaging. “They approached us about using OnBase as a place to collect documents,” said Eddie Heard. IT’s Imaging Applications Manager. “We worked with Web Services to create a web page for candidates to apply and submit their documents and reference information. Then selection committee members can login to review the applications. That was Phase One. In Phase Two, we added workflows for Architecture, Bioengineering, Biosciences, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. There is a feature to automatically send notifications to a reference’s email address, including a link for them to upload their letters of recommendation. Some of the departments wanted to see reviewer comments and a ranking, so we built a cover sheet that aggregates the rankings and displays the comments. After the initial reviews are completed, selection committee members can begin filtering applications by their average score and focus only on the applications that are rising to the top of the rankings.”
Will there be a Phase Three? “We are open to suggestions by the departments and the VPAA,” said Heard. “For example, we could also build an auto-create feature for Celeste to use each time a department contacts the VPAA about hiring a new NTT faculty position. Since we already know what works, it is easy to duplicate the features and space as soon as she hits the button.”