Even if you’ve never hired someone to work at Lehigh, you’ve been part of a hiring process – that’s how you got here in the first place. The university’s process has changed over the years, as the university moved from paper resumes, to PDFs via email, to an online applicant tracking system. While the hiring process has advanced technologically, the overall experience for candidates and hiring personnel can sometimes be frustratingly complex.
As part of Lehigh’s Organization of the Future strategic initiative, a group of 40 stakeholders has been working to improve the employee candidate experience and the internal systems that support hiring staff at Lehigh. Dubbed Reimaging Recruitment, the initiative will result in recommendations and actions that aim to create a more efficient, transparent, and user-friendly process for everyone involved.
Co-leads Aubrie Sobieski from Human Resources and Laura Chiles from the College of Arts and Sciences first assembled hiring managers, HR professionals, faculty members and technical experts for six mapping workshops. Participants divided the initiative into projects organized by the three phases of the hiring journey: pre-recruitment, active recruitment, and post-recruitment onboarding.
Elizabeth Miller Coleman from Campus Safety reported that she became engaged in the initiative because she enjoys being involved in projects that can help improve a university function. She hopes the result will be that the recruitment process would be streamlined across the university.
Elizabeth was involved in the active recruitment phase project, working on the timeframe from posting a position to making a job offer. “Our group met for a full day and then we were broken up into smaller projects with goals in mind. The smaller groups then met several times to work on those goals,” she said. “I learned that job recruitment is a long and complicated process throughout the university and not just within my division. I also learned that many departments recruit differently."
Stakeholders like Elizabeth, representing 26 different divisions of the university, identified areas of variation, inefficiency, and inconsistencies across departments. Working committees then developed specific suggestions to make the process less complex. These included:
- Using Jira to create one form to stretch across the full process
- Streamlining PageUp system functionality
- Deploying a schedule tool
- Reviewing technical integrations
- Revising standard operating procedures
Where there are challenges, there is also potential
Early on, it became evident that technical expertise would be needed to help envision optimizing tools like Jira and PageUp. Amanda Caton from LTS was eager to participate with her colleagues.
“Denise Campion, Dave Bernini, and I were designated to support the project from an LTS perspective,” said Amanda. “But as a hiring manager, I have also personally struggled with understanding the status of all of the approvals and onboarding tasks associated with my new team members and it makes it difficult to effectively onboard new people.”
Amanda believes Reimagining Recruitment will move Lehigh toward a streamlined, simplified process that provides transparency on discussions and the status of all the interdependent tasks across all the teams involved in recruitment. She added,“This initiative has been eye opening, and even a little overwhelming at times, but where there are challenges there is also potential."
Cindy Nguyen of the Human Resources Talent Team underlined how important the project is to bettering the candidate experience. “I am honored to be a part of this project since it directly impacts the full hiring process and candidate experience,” she said. “It has been enlightening to see how involved it is. Everyone has the same goals and it is invigorating to continue to move forward.”
Next Steps
Having finished most of the analysis, stakeholders are beginning to beta test solutions such as Jira-based workflows and new onboarding procedures. The initiative’s recommendations and implementation plan will be delivered this fall to executive sponsors Christine E. Cook, Vice President for Finance and Administration and Chris Halladay, Associate Vice President for Human Resources. Rollout of the revised recruitment process is set to start in fall 2025, pending approval.
"Reimagining Recruitment is truly a campus-wide initiative, and I am grateful for the participation of so many in our community,” Chris noted. “This collaborative effort embodies our vision of operational excellence-by bringing together diverse experiences and expertise, we are streamlining processes, enhancing transparency, and ultimately delivering a superior, user-centric experience for everyone involved in the hiring journey."
By incorporating stakeholder input, innovations in technology, and a shared vision, Reimagining Recruitment is laying the groundwork for a faster, more transparent, and more inclusive hiring process that will better serve the needs of candidates, hiring managers, and the Lehigh community.