Lincoln Public Schools

Ensuring Positive Growth for the District and Its Student

The Lincoln School District (LPS) is growing and thriving. In fact, just 10 years ago, the district served just over 31,000 students and had six less school buildings than it does today. So, it is no surprise the goal of LPS’ Human Resources Department is to employ the highest, most kid-conscious teachers and support staff to help effectively educate this growing body of students. However, to do this with excellence meant finding a new way to consolidate the hiring process with an easy-to-use, highly effective, application intake and hiring management system that was also paperless.

How can a school district that is serving so many students effectively attract, hire and retain high quality employees?

“Everything we did in HR was on paper,” says Dr. Nancy Biggs, Associate Superintendent for Human Resources for LPS. “When a Principal or HR staff member wanted to look at an applicant’s file, they too had to sort through a lot of paperwork. We knew we needed a major shift in our hiring process.”

The Challenges: Streamlining the Hiring Process

Before implementing SchoolRecruiter, LPS started an extensive search to find the right kind of solution to help
their Human Resource department better serve the candidates applying to their School District. To do so, they needed a system that could work with their current process, support a large School District, and streamline the application intake process so that multiple people within the district would have online access to review an applicant’s credentials, anywhere and anytime.

Each year LPS’ Human Resource Department:

• Entered every paper applications into a AS/400 system by hand
• Spent large amounts of time adding the applications to their system - five minutes for classified apps and 10 minutes for certified apps
• Processed each application that consisted of multiple-pages including a resume, transcript, references and an application for certification
• Had trouble staying in direct communication with the applicants when it came to scheduling interviews, missing application information and various job status updates

In addition to a massive amount of time spent entering the application information, the task of finding the right online solution to streamline how the applications were received. “An online system with flexibility and adaptability was key,” says Dr. Biggs. “No one in the country has our process and we knew that we would need a solution that could be modified to meet our needs.” LPS also struggled with finding a system that would support 6 different HR administrators’ hiring approaches while offering product support and training to those implementing the system. “Our application process had to get worked out,” says Kevin Kai Johnston, HR Generalist. “We have so many people to consider in the hiring process including not only the applicants but the HR support staff and the principals. We had to make sure we found a solution that would work with each.”

The Solution:Meeting The Needs, One Applicant At A Time

Seeking an online K-12 applicant tracking and hiring system that would reduce endless stacks of papers, while simplifying the hiring process and making it easier for LPS’s Human Resources staff and the Districts Principals ato review the applications, The Lincoln School District, implemented SchoolRecruiter in January of 2010.

“We looked at all the major players that provided online talent management,” says Dr. Biggs. “We found that SchoolRecruiter offered a product that could match our process.”

The decision seemed easy. As Kevin Johnston, HR Generalist for the District reviewed SchoolRecruiter; he was impressed by the adaptability of the online system. In fact, Johnston believes that the support staff at SchoolRecruiter helped to make their decision easy.

“We first got input from other districts using SchoolRecruiter,” says Johnston. “They kept telling us about how easy to use and adaptable the product was and how the SchoolRecruiter staff was willing to change the product to meet the needs of the District.”

With that, LPS decided to implement the SchoolRecruiter platform, but not before extensively interviewing many other talent management providers. As the District worked one-on-one with the SchoolRecruiter staff, they realized they were on the edge of drastically changing the face of their hiring procedures.

“The Netchemia team is always ready to help,” says Dr. Biggs. “They are willing to make changes and we don’t have to wait until next year for an upgrade. They make adapting easy, even though we are a large school district. We have access to programmers, designers, even the President; we can talk to anyone that’s critical to the functioning of our system.”

“We’re glad we’re online with SchoolRecruiter,” says Johnston. “Our principals think this is the coolest thing. We have a ton of them that just love it. When we ask our principals if they want to go back to paper, the answer is always ‘no way’.”

SchoolRecruiter provides school districts like Lincoln with the ability to

• Receive and track applications online
• Schedule interviews and aligning multiple administrator’s schedules.
• Place job postings for applicants and staff to view
• Conduct background check.
• Place job postings for applicants and staff to view
• Easily integrate with current back office systems
• Effectively manage Job fairs
  

The Results: A Talent Management System That is Changing the Face of HR

Now that LPS uses SchoolRecruiter, they continue to see a dramatic increase in quality of candidates that are applying for the Districts open positions.

“We see a long-term benefit with SchoolRecruiter,” says Dr. Biggs. “Now we can rapidly sort through our files. Plus, new hires normally use electronic applications and expect them. By having SchoolRecruiter in place, we can effectively attract the top candidates out there.”
 
By replacing piles of paperwork with an online Candidate Management System, school districts using SchoolRecruiter are able to streamline the recruiting process more effectively.

In addition, one of the unique features of SchoolRecruiter is that an applicant can track their progress within the hiring process, view their job application submission history, the status of their submitted applications, notes from the HR department and their interview schedules, 24/7, all online.

For school districts without an online system or those with online systems that aren’t generating the results they desire, Dr. Biggs wants them to know that SchoolRecruiter is the solution for their district.

“The SchoolRecruiter team is very accessible and offer Districts a solution with flexibility,” says Dr. Biggs.
“People want to work for you when you have all the latest bells and whistles. Now we do.”

 

Download Lincoln Case Study