Contact: Ralph Derickson

The statistics on OES are quite impressive. For the first year, 2,440 positions were posted in the OES. Of those, 1,650 positions have been filled, 328 have been cancelled, and 462 are in process; 34,438 candidates were referred to hiring officials.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 16, 2003) -- The University of Kentucky’s Online Employment System (OES) celebrated its first anniversary in November 2003 and, if the accolades from satisfied customers are any sign, it is sure to be an administrative staple at the university for many years to come.

Praise for the system, designed by a company called PeopleAdmin, has been expressed in many ways. A recent customer satisfaction survey, based on a scale with 5.0 as the top rating, showed no responses regarding the system that dropped below a 4.0.

Among the satisfied customers expressing their positive opinions at a recent review session of the first year of the OES operations was Barbara Ramsey, the hiring process coordinator (HPC) for the Department of Surgery in the UK College of Medicine.

Ramsey, who continuously has two or three jobs posted per week in the OES, said unabashedly, “Oh, I just love it. “ She noted that when she posts jobs she can expect a list of applicants by the eighth day. “Previously, it took up to three weeks.”

“It’s wonderful,” she continued. “If you want to re-post a job, the template for the job is still in the system and all you have to do is tweak it a little bit and put it back out there.”

In addition to taking a lot of the tiresome work out of the hiring process in a department that has a staff of some 200 persons, Ramsey said the OES has saved the department a lot of money because it does not need to run as many newspaper advertisements for positions. “It’s just easier to reach a larger population of people than we were able to previously,” she said.

Another major advantage to the system, Ramsey said, is that because resumes are posted online, there are e-mail addresses enabling hiring supervisors to write back and forth with applicants, including those from other states.

When OES was implemented at UK in November 2002, PeopleAdmin only had 12 institutional clients, said Linda Gallicchio, manager of employment in UK Human Resources. The company, located in Austin, Texas, now has 80 customers. The company continues to use much of the advertising material UK’s OES implementation team assembled when preparing to rollout the new program as examples of “best practices.”

The statistics on OES are quite impressive. For the first year, 2,440 positions were posted in the OES. Of those, 1,650 positions have been filled, 328 have been cancelled, and 462 are in process; 34,438 candidates were referred to hiring officials.

Also in the first year, 18,000-plus regular employment applications had been created in OES by people interested in jobs at the university.

Temporary employment also posts positions in OES. It is a popular tool, being “online” on the Internet, reaching a broad audience and being accessible “24/7” wherever you have access to the Internet. With temporary employment facilitating the placement of 500 to 700 temporary employees throughout the university in any given month, the ability to search by the skills inventory creates efficiency in finding and matching people with temporary positions.

The computer lab in Scovell Hall is convenient and makes it easy for people less familiar with computers to get assistance in applying for jobs online. The lab averages nearly 300 visitors each month.

Recent improvements to OES include the establishment of a six-month hold list (new employees ordinarily may not seek job transfers in the first six months of their UK employment); a falsification of application list; an easier process for creating requisitions; and for better security, more complex passwords that expire every 90 days for users.

OES was initially implemented for staff listings. After a year of experience, pilots of posting faculty listings are in process, Gallicchio said. “We’re just beginning to post faculty positions with two pilot faculty postings online that will give us some experience to share with the various colleges.”

Student employment is also utilizing more of OES’ capacity by now posting their jobs online and allowing student applicants to apply online as well. Human Resources is working to expand its student employment section to better serve as a referral agency for more eligible UK and LCC students seeking part-time jobs and/or full-time (summer) employment.