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UMBC’s journey to better staff recruitment

August 10, 2023

Kelly Coleman

HR Director, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of EAB.

The problem

UMBC has a long history of excellent tenure for staff and faculty. Candidates were plentiful for staff positions for the most part through 2019. Then was the perfect storm of external factors including COVID-19, the Great Resignation, and a changing candidate landscape.

I joined UMBC in 2022, the year that one-third of the workforce changed jobs. HR was reviewing processes and working with hiring managers because they were no longer receiving applications for vacancies like they once did. They no longer had an abundance of candidates to choose from, and the ones who did apply were no longer available by the time the department reached out.

Through EAB I was able to review studies, and articles, as well as learn from my peers. This was certainly not a problem localized to UMBC. UMBC managers needed updated information on the market to encourage them to change how they think about recruitment, and HR needed to look for process improvements.

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The solution

The recruitment team put together an updated process and training. We compared the candidate market to the enrollment cliff because the lack of births in the 2008 timeframe will cause a change in both. To better align with the market we started posting salaries on the job ads, we no longer had a hard “close” date (instead many positions were “open until filled”), we explained that there are mixed reviews on cover letters and not to discount candidates who do not submit one, and we encouraged the campus to source for candidates.

This is a journey of information sharing and tweaking our process using feedback from hiring managers, candidates, as well as market data. We are not done and never will be as the market is always changing and we move to a continuous improvement mindset.

The fellowship

One key thing I brought back to UMBC from the EAB fellowship is an understanding that we are not unique in our challenges. Whether it is budgets, space planning, admissions, retention, etc. many institutions are experiencing the same thing, and there are EAB resources to help us solve them!

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