Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, September 7, 2010,
Item 15
Number 15, consider and take appropriate action regarding executive manager, transportation and natural resources, postal the position and schedule and process for filling the pending position vacancy.
>> we placed an item on the agenda to move forward with the posting of the position of executive manager, transportation and natural resources.
I expressed last week my intent to retire at the end of January, about five months from now, which is enough time to find a replacement and also a little time for orientation and transition before the end of January.
so I was able to get with diane and kind of work out a schedule for doing that and a process.
it would have us posting the position immediately.
if there needed to be any changes to the job description, we could probably do that the next couple of weeks.
but the main thing is get started, get the word out, enable people to start preparing for applications and to submit them.
and then there's, of course, a screening process that the county normally would go through.
my recommendation is hrm do the initial screening for the minimum qualifications.
in the past h.r.
has also done some initial interviews just to make sure people are in the right area.
people apply for all sorts of jobs for different reasons so it helps to have them oriented to what exactly we're looking for.
I would then recommend that there be an intermediate screening by two groups, one, the executive managers.
and I would recommend as in the past that group of executive managers dwindle down the candidates from approximately 12 down to a -- perhaps a group of three to five that would go on to Commissioners court.
so basically get a fairly robust group coming in the door, have that narrowed down to about 12 and with the ultimate recommendation of like three to five finalists to the court.
of course, that all is dependent on what you get in the applicant pool.
maybe it's a very rich pool and you'll want a whole lot nor interview.
but that's kind of the rule of thumb we've used in the past.
I've asked danny hobby if he would head up that committee.
he's agreed he would do so if called upon.
I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to do that.
although I would like to serve on the executive management group that does the interviews as well.
I think I can contribute something to that process.
I'd also recommend that the -- that the executive group of transportation and natural resources have an opportunity to interview.
partly because I think there has to be a set there.
that t.n.r.
has any number of division directors and program managers who know the business quite well, and I think it would be important for them to impart their knowledge of the department to any candidate who is seeking to fill the position of executive manager.
so I think the combination between executive managers and the t.n.r.
executive group, you could get some pretty good input into your final decision on what -- what candidates to interview.
and then, of course, final decision is all yours.
and that would occur, according to our schedule, sometime in November.
the idea would be to bring someone on by the first of the year, they would have to give notice to their employer and that would take at least a couple weeks.
you've got the holidays intervening there.
so it is -- it's not a -- it's a tight schedule, but one that could be met if we stayed on schedule, and it also gives several -- I think six weeks for actually the applicants to apply and submit their applications.
>> and I should probably add that we are looking at advertising on more than just our website, going to the american public works association, the international city and county managers association, governmentjobs.com so we can get a pool in fairly quickly.
I think it's important to keep to the schedule.
when you are trying to hire over the holidays, a lot of things are up in the air, especially if we have people traveling in to interview with us, I think that we have a schedule pretty well defined which will be helpful for that interviewing process.
and also again, hiring around the holidays, people tend not to want to make a job switch over the holidays and a lot of people are vested at the end of the calendar year so people don't want to start until the beginning of the calendar year.
taking those factors into consideration, we put together this schedule, but we think it's of the essence to post the job as soon as possible, just a position announcement while the court can review the job description and make any changes to it.
>> so if the job is posted, the court decides to post the job, when will it actually post and take place, and if it has to be any changes made to the existing job description, which I don't know it will be or not, I mean I don't know, the last is probably pretty recent.
>> the last job description was on October 1st of last year, 2009, but we did want to give the court the opportunity to review the job description to make sure it is what you want.
we would like to you take a couple weeks to do that.
I don't recommend that we post the whole job description.
first of all, some of these places charge by the word.
secondly, we can make an announcement of the minimum qualifications and the nature of the summary of the job and start getting applications in and then turn around and send the job description to the candidates that we're interested in and give them a more full picture of the position at that time.
>> what's the time frame we are referring to on those specific statements that you just made?
>> we would like to go ahead and post the position, the position announcement if at all possible and give you two weeks to review the job description, which is included in the backup material.
>> okay.
I have no problem with this at all, it's expedient to some degree because we have another position that -- outstanding and that is the administrative ops executive manager.
we haven't filled that.
that's been around for over a year.
you know, so there's a relationship because we're talking about executive managers that positions need to be filled and we're acting pretty swiftly on this one, yet we haven't filled the other one.
somewhere along the line we need to fill the other one.
in the scheme of things because it really interferes, my opinion, with the current structure of this particular county not having those persons that need to be at the table when it comes to the organizational planning and all those other kind of things.
we have a void here.
we actually have a void.
if we are going ahead in any future direction as far as executive managers being involved in our planning, it appears to me we need to have all executive managers on board.
if there's some departments out there that are lingering because they don't have an executive manager.
you know, i.t.s.
and
>> [indiscernible], you know, the expo situation, hrmd, all of these departments are under administrative ops.
so again, it appears to me that we need to be looking just as aggressively at filling that other executive manager slot so we can look at whatever plans we need to be making for the next year to come in Travis County.
and that hasn't been done.
but we can aggressively move on this and we have aggression I feel moved on the other.
it don't make no sense to me.
in other words, my opinion, the wheel is not broke so don't fix it.
>> Commissioner Huber.
>> do you have a summary -- you said you were going to go ahead and post a sort of summary immediately.
>> the job description has a summary.
we'll probably wordsmith it a little bit and put the minimum qualifications up and how to apply.
>> did you distribute that to the court?
>> no, I haven't.
>> would you?
>> yes.
>> you said we could take several weeks to look at the job description.
one of the things I would just ask h.r.
to do in that period of time as well, these job descriptions I think were written for kind of broadly for the executive managers, and then though it says t.n.r.
executive manager at the top, if we end up putting out this entire job description, I think it's so generic in some places it could be misconstrued as more global authority over county activities than the t.n.r.
department and maybe that's appropriate in some places, but I'm thinking that maybe h.r.
could go back and read it from that perspective of someone who is not familiar with the county and see where perhaps t.n.r.
should be -- executive manager should be inserted to make it a little more specific.
>> right.
>> so you are asking that we approve posting the position and the general process described in the backup, but we'll have an opportunity to give final -- well, consider for final approval the job description in about two weeks.
>> yes, sir.
>> okay.
so joel, this t.n.r.
management group is new to me.
how many people are on that one?
>> every one of my division directors and program managers.
the upper management group.
>> about how many?
>> I would say there's probably 14 including all the program managers.
>> okay.
any other questions or comments?
move that we approve the posting and the process in general and the intention to bring back to the court either this same job description or a revised one two weeks from today for the court to give final approval of the job description and between now and then let's give it some thought and that is the one that we will send to the applicants when they want more information about the nature of the job, duties and responsibilities, et cetera.
>> I'll second that, judge, but I'm very serious about filling that other vacancy and I don't think we can move forward properly as a instructed organization until all of these executive managers slots have been filled.
and this is including this one here.
so I'm very concerned about it.
but I'll second this motion.
>> this one to post today.
>> exactly.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
thank you all very much.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 2010 7:56 PM
