Travis County Commissioners Court
April 20, 2010,
Item 11
Item number 11 is to consider and take appropriate action regarding the selection process for the director of the human resources management division. Good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning. I'm roger jeffreys, executive manager of justice and public safety and also the liaison to hrmd from the organizational planning team. The organizational planning team includes the five executive managers, the county auditor and the county purchaser agent. I think some of them are back here. I'm with tracy calaway, our interim human resources director. First we wanted to give you an update of where we are with the hrmd hiring process. If i get these numbers wrong, correct me, but we got over 350 applications from around the country for the hrmd director. 40 of those 350 returned the supplemental questionnaire. Of those 40, i know tracy personally screened 18 of those, either by phone or by skype. And they referred 11 to the organizational planning team, and we had a process where we selected five finalists to interview on april 29th. Actually, in the interim between the time you received your backup and right now one of those dropped out, so we're down to four finalists. And the next step in the process is again for the organizational planning team to interview. We've set aside the entire day of the 29th to interview the four finalists. We're actually going to meet on thursday to determine if we're going to pick a fifth. And i know the question has been raised whether the organizational planning team would actually make the final selection or we would forward the three finalists to the commissioners court for your selection. And i think that's the question that's open right now.
>> we've asked the team to do quite a bit of work and they've done it. Commissioner gomez and i have served as a sort of subcommittee of the court to substitute for the missing executive manager, so in my view the question is whether we want to interview a shorter short list or whether we want to ask the team to go ahead and make the selection for us. To be honest, when i thought about this since my last meeting, it seems to me that the court ought to interview two or three people and make the decision. I think this is a critical slot for us and i don't know -- we're looking at an afternoon, though, if we interview two or three. A little bit of time before interview, the interviews themselves and then a little bit of time afterwards to make the selection. But i'll defer to a majority of the court.
>> judge? If i might just add, this position would not be reporting directly to the court as it appears. And i know that the organizational planning team -- the operations planning team has had -- thanks to tracy -- some training in the interviewing process, which i think is really critical to the evaluations of the candidates, which the court at least at this point has not had the benefit of. So i think just from my own perspective, i think it would be entirely appropriate for the organizational planning team to do the interviews and make the final decision. I think that they've been working much closer with this than the court.
>> how many members are on the -- how many persons are on the team?
>> there's the five executive managers and then the county auditor and the county purchasing agent. So seven.
>> commissioner eckhardt?
>> i am weighing two competing issues in my mind. One is that in the best of all worlds we would not be -- the commissioners court would not be hiring this position. An executive manager with whom this person would be working closely and reporting directly to would be doing that hiring. There's that issue. So that argues in favor of the management team making the selection. Then there's this other issue over here, which is at some point we will -- this commissioners court will be responsible for hiring an executive manager who will -- to whom this person will report or deciding upon some sort of -- some other organizational structure that will supervise this position. So that is the decision that we have to make in the future. So i want the commissioners court to be involved in the selection to some degree so that we can be mindful of our future decision about who is the supervisor of this decision. But i have to say in weighing those two i do think it should be the core team that makes the decision on the actual hiring, but i would like to see perhaps the subcommittee being -- providing -- here's a possibility. I'm just going to throw it out. It seems like it would be good for some portion, if not all of the court, to participate in the interview process if just to watch it and to provide advice to it. So that we will be mindful of our decision -- our next decision point, which is who supervises this shop.
>> are you here on this item?
>> i'm here to provide whatever input i can. No, i'm not here with any specific agenda.
>> i think it might be helpful, if tracy doesn't mind, to describe the process that the organizational planning team is going to go through to interview the four or five finalists.
>> and it might just be the subcommittee that advises on it. I don't want to hamper the process.
>> okay. Just a little bit of history. So the job was posted, we came to court. You all provided insight on the job description. The information that came in, we've talked about over 350 applicants. We then identified individuals who matched the job description best. We then sent them what's called a supplemental information form and it asked very basic information, things about salary expectations, but also their experience with certain situations or experiences related to the county such as decentralized units, multiunits, management, employee relations. We looked at that as well. From there 18 were identified. They either came in person, they chose to come in person to spend an hour with me talking about the structure, the expectations of the role, and then where i evaluated them as well. Of the 18, 11 -- the resume, the application, along with the supplemental data form, went to the operations planning team. Chab actively they came -- collaboratively they came up with the top five. Our goal from there was to take those five and do two additional assessments. One would be having them do what's called the conflict management assessment, which is an instrument that's valid and reliable to gauge conflict management. The second one would be to respond to a case study regarding an employee relations issue as well as check references. We're asking candidates to provide two references of peers, two references of clients or supervisor, and two references for direct reports. We would then decide which three of those to check as well. Based on that we would then -- we could then refer the top three to you, the top two to you or just go ahead and make the selection.
>> i wouldn't ask the subcommittee of commissioner gomez and me to do further work here. I think it's black and white, either the commissioners court interviews and makes the decision or the team does it. This is a critical position. I don't know whether we'll reorganize or not. I do know we'll have an item on the agenda real soon to we can move in some direction. We've been in limbo for that for several months now. We've asked the team to do a whole lot. We will have to interact with this person extensively until we decide what to do with the executive manager's slot. Even if we fill that one based on the time that it's taken us to fill critical positions in the past, it will take several months to get that done. So it's the 51-49 for me, though. Whatever our decision is is fine. I think it's critical enough for the commissionrs court basically to do it.
>> and i think --
>> i was about to say therefore i move that the commissioners court ask the team to short list down to three and that we interview those three and make a selection. Is there a second? That motion dies for lack of a second.
>> and i felt that the process that the team followed was very extensive and probably would have been -- it represented i think what this court would have done? Or even as a subcommittee had been appointed to specifically do this, i think that's what we would have done. And so i have to compliment the team for a job well done in arriving at this point. I also felt that because the groundwork had been done very, very competently and well that you were also in a position to go ahead and make that decision to hire -- to interview and then to also make the recommendation to the court then of who you would recommend to be hired following that process. And so that was what i felt needed to be the decision for the court to make.
>> is there a motion?
>> i would move that we give direction to the team to continue with the process of interviewing and coming up with a final recommendation to this court for approval.
>> second.
>> any discussion of the motion? Commissioner eckhardt.
>> would it be -- this has been a very comprehensive process, and i really want to commend y'all on it. It is really wonderful to see. Would it be amenable your process -- and if the answer is yes, i'll ask if it can be a friendly amendment -- to include a representative from the county attorney's office to participate, although be a non-voting participant in the interview process since the county attorney's office is -- works to closely with the hr coordinator? Syd is now making a bid for specific assistant county attorneys.
>> amenable, workable to the team?
>> okay. Sounds like the team is amenable that.
>> would that be acceptable as a friendly amendment?
>> that's acceptable to me. , and to the second?
>> any more discussion? Mr. Priest?
>> i wanted to just make one statement that i did think that sometimes we have people in our human resources that maybe would be more qualified for one position, but they actually want to work in another position. And some of the input that we've heard from these fine folks here in the past and others -- of course, the situation that we're facing is that i'm just along the same lines that commissioner gomez is talking about. I'm just really wanting the commissioners court to really listen to the people. And i just wanted to echo the fact that i'm so very comfortable even without an attorney involved in the process to allow these people to just make the decision, come back and provide it to the court and court approve it. And that's what i would prefer because of just the history of the situation, generally speaking. But yeah, i just really hope that y'all will just go ahead and give them full rein, power and authority to make the recommendation and bring back to you when they have chosen through the process and then just basically have y'all approve it. That's really all i wanted to share.
>> all in favor of the motion?
>> i have something to discuss.
>> please do it.
>> thank you. You know, first of all, i would like to thank the committee. Y'all have done a great, great job working under some conditions that really some folks maybe would run away from. In saying that, my position is always -- my position hasn't changed. I haven't supported any of this for quite some time. The reason for that lack of support is because i believe in the executive manager share of things. And this position would come up under the executive manager and we're absent an executive manager. So it comes -- in my opinion it comes of accountability and who would they be accountable to? We haven't even got an executive manager for this slot. So again, i applaud to you what you're doing, but as i've done before in the past, i just can't support it. I'm not going to support it today. So i just want to let you know where i'm coming from. But thank you for your hard work. Thank you.
>> all in favor of the motion? Show commissioners eckhardt, huber, gomez voting in favor. Voting against show judge biscoe, commissioner davis. Voting against? Okay. Commissioner davis voting against. Thank y'all very much.
>> thank y'all.
>> judge, i just want to make the statement that -- about the first amendment that as i was watching this, the cameras were juggling and getting me with my t-shirt. I wasn't holding a sign, i was just shut sitting there with my t-shirt and you have your cameras juggled around so they could see me and my t-shirt and that even goes against your rules about holding a sign right now. I wasn't holding a sign, i was just sitting there with my t-shirt. But it's so -- y'all are so freaked out about squashing our first amendment rights that you have trained these people to get the camera off of anybody who happens to have a t-shirt on. That might not fit into the -- i don't know, the format. So anyway, i was very ?
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 20, 2010 1:53 PM
