Welcome to the second post in our Talent Acquisition series for Research Administration. (If you missed Part 1: Retention, you can read it here.)
Recruitment is more nuanced than it may seem at first glance. It involves much more than attracting higher application volume; it is also about paying attention to the work environment an institution provides. Once hired, will staff enjoy streamlined business processes that reduce manual redundancy? If not, you’re missing out on a powerful recruitment and retention tool: workplace satisfaction.
Additionally, the landscape of recruitment has changed significantly over the past five years. Suddenly, research institutions find themselves competing with national and international organizations for top candidates. The marketing imperatives that will separate them from the crowd differ from those in a local environment. Beyond salary and benefits, which are often inflexible, your institution’s perks (the campus, local environment, research administration team, etc.) may make all the difference.
On top of commentary from our panel, we’ve heard many research administrators say that remote and hybrid working environments simply aren’t a sufficient incentive to attract staff in a post-COVID working environment. Applicants are looking for more: a manageable workload, work-life balance, and a salary that can compete on a national scale.
Here are the top strategies that emerged from our conversation with research administration leaders at the University of Kentucky and the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Prevent staffing disruption
Retention is an ideal first step, but recruitment will eventually be necessary. During these transitional periods, disruption is a given, and sometimes it’s all hands on deck to keep processes moving while you’re short on staff.
To make transitions easier, prepare for staffing shortages before they happen. For example, departing staff usually give at least two weeks’ notice, allowing time for them to save files to a shared drive and complete pre-work that will set up their teammates for success.
Another helpful practice is tracking the departing employee’s workload to understand what’s pending. This process of information gathering provides the relevant information to others on the team, who can then pick it up and cover it as needed. Rather than asking departing staff to work as hard as possible in their last two weeks, take proactive steps to train other staff members on relevant tasks and get workloads organized and optimized for transfer.
Build staffing pools
Recruitment is often a long process that takes significant time and energy from the recruitment administration and human resources teams. Don’t let all that energy go to waste! You’ll likely conduct dozens of interviews while filling a position on your RA team, but you’ll only hire one person per posting. Develop staffing pools of qualified applicants to help get ahead of future vacancies, and be mindful of how you treat and track your second-choice candidates.
Second-choice candidates are pre-vetted and open to work, so they might be ready to hire when another position opens up. Treat those contacts well, keeping them on file and ready to hand in case you need to hire again.
Creating a viable candidate pool provides a significant strategic advantage in a competitive marketplace. Keep communication with candidates open and transparent, answering all of their questions and providing proactive updates. Consider what makes you feel valued and welcomed as a candidate, and try to embody that spirit at every stage of recruitment.
Leverage interviews to build your employer brand
As Jeff Sullivan (University of Kentucky) put it, “If you want to have success where others aren’t, you have to do things others aren’t doing.” Remember that candidates are interviewing you as well, so use the interview process as a platform to build your employer brand and represent your institution with care. Let everyone who wasn’t selected know that there will be future opportunities available and that you’ll remember them when spots open up.
Kim Carter (University of Kentucky) suggests taking time for more informal conversations, not just about the interview process but about your team’s strategic plans, the overall work culture, and other details that might entice candidates to want the job.
Arrange appointments so candidates can meet the colleagues they’d be working with. Don’t make these meetings an interview—this is simply a time for candidates to meet the team and speak frankly about what it’s like to work there. These informal conversations and relationship-building activities tend to create more excitement in a chosen candidate than a simple, “You’ll hear from us soon.”
Finally, give candidates a realistic job preview, including both the good and the challenging. You’ll have much better results over the long run if you’re honest about challenges than if you hold information back and find out too late that the fit is bad or that the candidate has regrets after joining your team.
Sell more than salary
When competing on the national employment stage, salary plays a significant role. Midwest universities suddenly find themselves competing against California’s UC system, which pays according to a much higher cost of living, affording those institutions their pick of top candidates.
The good news is that, according to research from Deloitte, salary plays only a small part in the overall workplace experience that drives employee retention and helps attract new staff. Schools with smaller budgets should emphasize their other virtues over salary. A welcoming atmosphere, leading-edge technology, positive workplace culture, and strong collaboration within and between teams are all factors in a candidate’s choice.
In interviews, don’t just ask questions; leave time to share information about the RA unit and how it fits within the larger organization. Give examples of the level of training and support candidates can expect over the lifetime of their position. These benefits are meaningful and effective in attracting staff, even when you can’t compete in terms of salary.
Communicate with HR
Speaking to HR about research administration as a profession can be tricky. Institutions often end up with a wide range of job titles and descriptions, and the resulting hierarchy can be extremely unclear. Jeff shared that there were over 30 different job titles to describe grants administration at the University of Kentucky prior to a consultation project with Deloitte designed to clarify their structure.
Develop close working relationships with the HR staff responsible for processing your candidates. Have open conversations about what your job is like and what makes it different from other roles, helping HR to understand the challenges your unit faces. All of this goes a long way toward helping find the best candidates. Working as a team toward finding and keeping staff is critical.
Also, as Mickey Stevenson (University of Texas-San Antonio) reminded us, the importance of risk level in research compliance is sometimes missed by people outside of sponsored programs. “Research wouldn’t be able to go without us,” she says. “So that’s one place to start.” Highlight the importance of research compliance and how the university depends upon those positions. It’s easy to see the role as purely administrative, without a larger purpose; RA hiring managers must connect those dots, documenting how the process works.
Form strong relationships with HR as early in the process as possible. It’s more helpful to do it before you start hiring than during the recruitment process when it’s often too late to effectively communicate core concepts.
Get creative
Recruitment in a challenging market will require some creativity and a willingness to adjust your approach. Overall, be strategic and intentional about how you hire. Put together a spreadsheet for tracking and speak to hiring managers about their needs. Plot on a calendar where those needs are growing or diminishing and when those shifts will occur. That calendar should inform your timeline and the skill set you’re looking for.
Another option is to look closely at your turnover rate. Can you safely overstaff for a period of time without hitting the budget too hard? If so, it’s an approach worth considering. If the budget is unduly impacted, you can always pause hiring later—but this approach ensures you’ll have the right staff in place when you need them to compensate for turnover.
Jeff also shared one final strategy: to look for candidates where others aren’t. For example, Kentucky has been ravaged by the opioid epidemic. Studies show that those who obtain employment after opioid addiction are far more likely to feel loyalty and appreciation to the organization that hired them. In other words, don’t skip over applicant pools you may have previously considered as barriers to employment. Fish in ponds where other people are not fishing, and you’ll have much more success in obtaining candidates.
