Travis County Commissioners Court
May 10, 2005
Item 8
8. Receive update and take appropriate action on recruitment efforts and strategy to fill the emergency services coordinator position.
>> we, alicia perez, executive manager for administrative operations. H.r. Sent out information on the recruitment efforts to fill the emergency services coordinator to date. And we have a -- received a lot of applicants, a total of 52, but none met the -- the full requirements of the job. We get a lot of applicants, now much more than we did before, because of the internet. And we post jobs or people come in to look at -- at our website and the jobs. So -- so we had discussed previously a recruitment plan and you have a draft of the recruitment plan in your backup. This would provide a more targeted recruitment of individuals or -- associations that -- that we feel would have individuals with the appropriate qualifications for this job. And may improve our ability to match the -- the job with -- with an individual and their qualifications. Various recruiting dallas involved. So if we could take a look at some of the -- some of the associations that are on here and -- and see which of these you feel would be most important or if any of you are familiar with them, provide some guidance as to where you would like to have -- have the job posted or we could post it on all of it.
>> alicia, can you just for purposes of discussion, differentiate between preferred qualifications versus minimum qualifications. What was the difference there? The minimum qualifications are things that you absolutely have to meet in order to -- to be eligible for the job. Meaning if it requires a bachelor's degree, you have to have a bachelor's degree. You have to have 10 years of experience, you have to have been a manager for -- for before for five of those years, those sorts of things are what would be minimum qualifications. Preferred qualifications and we just --
>> was that about the master's degree.
>> yeah, preferred master's degree in public administration, possession of a valid -- I mean, valid driver's license is preferred, of course, most people would have that anyway. But for this particular job, what you have as preferred is a master's.
>> did linda have an update? Is the number still 3 or was there a new sweep that was done, I think that cutoff was from the 29th, I think we've had a few more come on through.
>> yes, today the most recent check on the pool is that out of 57 applications, five meet the minimum qualifications posted. And there are zero who need the -- who meet the prefer. What we are finding in the five is that there's a great deal of experience that exists among many of the applicants in the areas that you are targeting and although they may not have met the -- the preferred qualifications as alicia described, they would based on experience through the combination of bachelor's degree and experience meet the minimum qualifications.
>> then linda, do you have the new breakout on the residents of the applicants who meet the minimum qualifications.
>> there are two in Austin, from the Austin area.
>> okay.
>> one outside of Austin but a texan.
>> okay.
>> and then two from out of state.
>> great, thank you.
>> but on the preferred, have we allowed that in the past? With other applicants? To say you may not have this, but if you have this number of years of experience, that would be equal to that?
>> yes, that's a very appropriate --
>> we have done that in the past?
>> the postings, that is something that -- that we generally do when -- when a hiring entity wants a special kind of skill.
>> does mr. [indiscernible] have a master's degree?
>> har don.
>> does [indiscernible] have a master's degree.
>> I don't know. I’m not going to get way hung up on the master's degree, since we've had other wonderful people who are managers here to not have the master's degree.
>> the task today is to try to figure out what action to take to likely generate other applications.
>> I guess the other option is for you to take a look at those five applications and then decide if someone meets your requirements or standards.
>> do we have that back up?
>> [indiscernible] [multiple voices]
>> at least trying to get something we can shorten this down to six to eight.
>> we can do both. We can take a look at what we have got already at the same time expanding so that we are not losing any time here if -- if the --
>> first look.
>> yeah.
>> give us --
>> those are my recommendations today after looking at the plan, is that we pull out the newspapers and we do the others. If it is possible to get a big bang for a little investment, seems to me that by using all of the others plus a little bit more -- the newspaper is all right, but it's a lot more general than the others appear to be. And at the university we can do those free, right?
>> yes, that's correct.
>> you are not done with that already? [multiple voices]
>> certainly want to use those if they're free. It's just a matter of -- you -- do we send the whole job description or do we try to reduce that down to a description and a few words?
>> no, it's actually reduced to the central elements of the job itself.
>> we let them know whether they can get a job -- where they can get a job description if they want the copy of that?
>> then how quickly on the professional associations, those are online, how quickly does it get online?
>> it depends on their posting period and if we -- we can get it out very quickly, but the question would be have we missed their deadline for putting it up, that might be a established to that organization?
>> online would suggest that we could get up quickly, whereas a classified ad there may be print deadlines that --
>> exactly. Usually in the prirnt deadlines -- print deadlines because they are monthly publications or periodically, but not -- not every week kind of publishing. That it takes a bit longer to get it posted and printed -- in the printed media.
>> if we look at the top category, I guess I question the firemen's and fire marshal's association deal at 250, we pull it out, then that top one would go to 500, my reason for that is that we spend a lot of time with the fire marshal's office and kind of beefed it up recently anyway, I would think that -- that we can get somebody with experience, more experience anywhere would be this right here.
>> uh-huh.
>> some of the other --
>> just a thought.
>> added on to the national emergency association, he's got some other, 50 bucks and it's one of his suggested adds.
>> we can get them up right away and as you see there, they are -- there are varying time frames that these are actually posted once we access them through those associations.
>> so, judge, your motion is everything that's on this draft are you criewrment plan mine -- recruitment plan minus state fireman's, fireman's association and -- [speaker interrupted -- multiple voices]
>> those industry magazines, those seem a little expensive.
>> I would not do those.
>> yeah.
>> I think they cost a whole lot more than they would benefit us. I did not see that. So I guess I’m looking at professional associations, without the fire marshals. And government associations, all of those would seem to be good targets for us.
>> yes, sir.
>> employment publications, most of those are free. Public sector job bulletin, monthly newsletter, we think that's worth 20, $25 compared to the others or do we know?
>> I think we would be fine with the others. [multiple voices] that one.
>> public sector job bulletin. Is that out of washington d.c. Or somewhere or nationwide.
>> yes, it is. It picks up of course jobs that we are attempting to post, the distribution is very wide on that. It's also in addition to the newsletter, there is a web posting, also.
>> maybe worth $125. Do you think?
>> sure.
>> it's very cheap.
>> then pull out no to industry magazines because of cost and I guess newspapers, too, hold off on them. Because of costs and yes to colleges and universities because they are so affordable. Okay. At zero. So basically we have got -- pretty much all of -- all four of these categories, pulling out the firemen's and fire marshal's association.
>> sure.
>> and --
>> that sound all right.
>> eliminating industry mags and newspapers categories.
>> uh-huh.
>> and so do we have a source of funding for this?
>> typically, the department reimburses the h.r. Recruiting line item because this expense is greater, obviously, than what we typically spend on a job posting.
>> do you have enough to advance, though [multiple voices]
>> take care of that paperwork later.
>> okay, with those changes I would think 500, 2150, 2275, these ought to come to 2275, $2,275. So my motion is to approve the ones that we indicated, authorize expenditure of about $2,275 with the understanding that at the appropriate time the Commissioners court will identify a source of funding to reimburse the advertising line item for hrmd.
>> or we can identify resources within h.r., training or something like that where we have some money.
>> okay.
>> do we want the five that meet the minimum to be forwarded on to the court?
>> that's fine.
>> we can just see what's in-house already.
>> okay.
>> that's fine with me.
>> okay.
>> now the others are some borderline minimum or -- or should we be left with the impression that they clearly do not meet the minimum qualifications?
>> no, they are in the minimum category, they meet the minimum.
>> I’m talking about the other 49.
>> oh, the other 49, no, no, they are not.
>> the minimum, huh-uh.
>> clearly they do not meet the minimum.
>> that's correct.
>> that means unqualified based on stated criteria.
>> yes.
>> yes.
>> okay.
>> any more discussion that that was seconded by Commissioner Gomez, all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 8:12 AM