As employers and employees of the University of Wyoming community continue to get familiar with the new recruitment system launched by UW Human Resources just over three weeks ago, some departments and offices across campus have had more success than others.
The new Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service human resources management system (HRMS) became fully operational Jan. 22 after a hiring freeze during the interim as the system was settled into place. Some employers are experiencing smooth sailing, while others are waiting for long periods of time to see their open positions listed on the new site.
HR’s own Associate Director of Classification/Compensation and Talent Acquisition, Mark Bercheni, acknowledged the delays and said HR has been getting more and more in the swing of things.
“Some of those delays have been a couple of weeks, which is really not acceptable, but we’re working on that and cleaning that up,” Bercheni said. “We don’t expect that to happen for much longer.”
Some employers around campus expressed an understanding of the adjustment period when it comes to getting new positions posted and filled. Letecia Guevara, the UW bookstore’s floor supervisor in charge of hiring and scheduling, said the bookstore has been in about the middle of the road.
“We have had a few instances where that’s happened, but that kind of depends on when you do it, because they were going through their transition,” Guevara said. “For the most part ours have been going okay, but trying to get there and trying do the instructions for it was difficult. They did give you instructions but they weren’t very clear.”
The launch of the new system occurred alongside a spike in the number of new jobs submitted to HR to be filled. Bercheni said there are “a couple times where we get inundated” during the year, with well over 600 sent in the first few weeks of the semester.
“Now that we’re doing that in the system, it’s a pretty big shift for a lot of people, and it’s a pretty big shift for us to where we have pretty large numbers coming through and there are certain things recruiters have to do,” Bercheni said.
Bercheni explained that with the new system comes new training that HR personnel need to work through to be able to process and finalize new hires, from the creation of the listing to fully employing an individual and getting them on UW’s payroll.
“A lot of these processes need approvals. You have to take the training to be able to utilize the system or even be an approver,” Bercheni said. “There were some hiccups at the very beginning as we were needing approvers to take the training to do what they needed to do to be able to move it forward.”
Hiccups aside, Bercheni emphasized the new system’s superiority to the older methods of hiring that ranged from the previous software used by the University for some positions and simple paper forms for others than needed to pinball around several offices before arriving at HR. Now all campus positions and hiring procedures are integrated into the Taleo system, which itself integrates into other Oracle database services used by UW.
“This is a much better system for recruitment and for the hiring managers and candidates,” Bercheni said. “The candidate experience in this system is much better than what the old system had. Being able to come out here and zero in on the type of job you’re looking for is really important.”
Debbie Allred, assistant manager of the UW Athletics business office, is likewise enthused and “pleasantly surprised” with the new system, as well as HR’s efforts to stay on top of things.
“It seems to be working very well, and when I do have issues or problems HR is really quick to help me and get the problems resolved,” Allred said. “I do think there will always be some delays until they get all the kinks worked out.”
