Career Employment

Thank You for Your Participation

In our August newsletter, we invited you to give us your feedback through our 2nd annual “Hiring Manager Survey.” Thanks to your participation we had 177 responses! The overall results highlighted that hiring officials across campus feel that the services received from HR Career Employment have continued to improve over the past year. We also received feedback that the introduction of the Hiring Enhancement Program has added great resources and tools which have proven to be useful in the hiring and selection process. Our goal is to thoroughly review all of the results and see how we can continue to improve our services to better support you as a hiring official. As a sneak-peek, see our Selecting for Success TIP below on creating an effective job posting. Thank you again for your feedback. Keep it coming!

Updates

As you may already know, the myUK training registration system was recently updated, effective 9/8/09. This change affects anyone interested in registering for HR training courses, including our Hiring Enhancement Program trainings. For your convenience we have included a link below to the myUK Learning Solution Step-by-Step guide. Please take a moment to review the guide before you log on to register for our upcoming training events:

http://hr.uky.edu/TandD/lms/tutorial_fullscreen.php

If you need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail Jon Gent at 257-2608 or jon.gent@uky.edu.

What’s New

We’ve had such a great response from our Behavior Based Interviewing (BBI) Series and Behavior Based Interviewing 1-day training that we added a new training. Behavior Based Interviewing 401 course will give you an opportunity to practice the valuable skills and concepts you’ve learned by participating in a behavior based interview simulation. So mark your calendar and register for the debut session of BBI 401 on Thursday, November 12th from 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. in 220 Scovell Hall, Suite 1.

*Please note Behavior Based Interviewing 101, 201, and 301 are pre-requisites for this training so if you haven’t learned the foundation of behavior based interviewing, please join us for our 1-day session on Tuesday, October 20th first.(details below).

Upcoming Trainings
To learn more about these trainings, click on the training title or visit http://www.uky.edu/HR/employ/HEPTraining.html.

For a quick tutorial on how to register, click here.

How to Develop an Effective Job Posting
Tuesday, October 6th
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
403 Wethington Building

Behavior Based Interviewing 1-Day Training
Tuesday, October 20th
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
220 Scovell Hall, Suite 1.

Legal Considerations
Tuesday, November 3rd
1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
220 Scovell Hall, Suite 1

UK's Hiring Process & Interviewing Techniques
Tuesday, November 10th
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
218 Wethington

Behavior Based Interviewing 401
Thursday, November 12th
1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
220 Scovell Hall, Suite 1

To register for the trainings, please use the “myUK” Training Center available under Employee Self-Service at http://myuk.uky.edu.

Did You Know?

It is common practice for hiring officials to request applicants to attach a resume and cover letter along with their application. However, you can also have applicants attach additional documents such as academic transcripts, writing samples, reference letters and/or answers to additional questions related to your position. These additional documents can provide the hiring department with more information to consider as they go through the selection process.

If you are interested in having applicants attach additional documents, make sure to check the appropriate box(es) in OES when selecting what documents you would like the applicant to attach when posting a position. It is also important to provide details of exactly what you would like the applicant to attach in the job summary. If you have any questions, feel free to contact a member of your dedicated employment team who can walk you through this process.

Selecting for Success TIP: Creating Effective Posting Specific Questions!
Posting specific questions (PSQ) are great way to gather additional information from your applicants. This information can be used as built-in screening tool to determine if an applicant has the required skill set and experience necessary to be successful in the position. Here are some quick tips on creating effective PSQs:

• First identify the “must-have” skills and experience for the position.
• Design open-ended (long text response) and close-ended (multiple choice response) questions to solicit detailed information enabling you to evaluate the targeted “must-have” skills and experience.
• A good general rule is to use no more than 5 total questions with 1-2 of these questions being open-ended.
• Open-ended questions can also be used to evaluate an applicant’s written communication. It is appropriate and important to consider typos, grammar, as well as the overall content of the long text response.
• When designing your PSQs be specific! It is important to not leave anything up for interpretation.
• If you want to evaluate applicants’ supervisory skills and experience, create a PSQ that directs the applicants to provide the details you are looking for. Example: “Describe your supervisory experience. Please include the number of employees whom you have supervised and the level of supervision including your experience in hiring, staff development, training and performance management.”
• It is also a good practice to ask for an applicant’s “paid work experience”. This allows you to get a better understanding of an applicant’s true work responsibilities and experience instead of their general viewpoints or personal experiences. Example: “Indicate the number of years of paid work experience you have in financial and budget reconciliation.” Asking for paid work experience will clarify that the applicant should not include unpaid work, such as balancing their checkbook.

Spending time in creating specific PSQs for your position can assist in determining who your top applicants are and help save you time during the application review process.

For more assistance in creating effective PSQs feel free to contact your dedicated Employment Specialist or Consultant. In addition, we offer a two-hour training, How to Develop an Effective Job Posting,that discusses in more detail creating PSQs.