Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Human Resources and Talent Development (HRTD) Committee Meeting, Thursday, November 14, 2024

Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 54m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1029860776?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-21. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:02] thank you so much for being here today everyone we will start our HR TD committee meeting for November 14th 2024 if we could just go to since we do not have public comment today we could move to 3.1 approval of the October 24th minutes could I please have a motion to approve the minutes did you get a chance

[00:00:31] to look i have a motion from um miss chandler um all in favor say aye aye aye so we will go ahead and we will pass the minutes um and then we will move on to action items 4.01 um and if you would like to start miss boleyn with 7301 licensed staff thank you thank you mrs griffiths so if uh the The committee will recall we HRTD brought forth revisions to policy 7301 licensed staff at our October meeting, not too long ago, actually.

[00:01:11] And then this policy did go out for public feedback. And I will ask Bob Phillips, HRTD director, to remind the committee of the highlights and to talk through any feedback. Thank you.

[00:01:29] As a reminder, policy 7301 governs and identifies the criteria for employing and paying licensed staff for the division, in addition to the various ways to be licensed or re-licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia, including the new local eligibility license.

[00:01:46] The former regulation will be deleted and incorporated into the last section of the revised policy, which governs re-licensure. Public feedback centered around the Virginia code numbers and the governing subsections, which were added and/or corrected in the latest version that you see in front of you.

[00:02:05] - Thank you very much. Ms. Chandler, do you have any questions? - I don't. - These policies are pretty straightforward, so I don't either. So I guess we'll move them to action. Can we move them to action or consent?

[00:02:21] - They would go to the full school board for information. - Okay, information item. So we'll go ahead and do that and we'll, I have thumbs up, okay. - I'm just gonna say, Madam Chair, I'm happy to make a motion we move this policy forward to the full board thank you very much and we'll go ahead and do that and with that being said we'll move on to the next item which is 4.02 policy 7308 provision of professional references yes ma'am thank you so similar to the previous policy we did bring this before committee at our

[00:03:00] October meeting and it has had the opportunity to go out for feedback as well I believe committee members may have had additional questions also and I've asked miss Davis to go back through any highlights and try to address those questions for the committee this evening good evening as miss Bolin mentioned we have recommended changes to policy 7308 to really simplify and realign the policy language, as well as clarify code requirements.

[00:03:36] This policy was last reviewed when it was initially adopted in 2018, so it is up for review for 2024. The policy was sent for feedback with no feedback provided. Outside of the general grammatical and formatting changes, lines 14 to 17 were struck and added back into the opening of the policy just for clarifying purposes.

[00:03:57] And to align with code requirements, B2 and B3 were struck with B2 incorporated into section B1 and B3 moved to B4. An additional code reference was also added to the policy as the previous reference code was not codified at the time the policy was adopted.

[00:04:16] I do want to point out that there were some questions at the last committee meeting regarding the requirements for someone to provide a reference. This policy does not require an employee to provide a reference, but rather does provide guidance for those who choose to do so.

[00:04:32] And at any time an employee has a question related to a professional reference, they are also able to reach out to HRTD with questions, which we have had employees do. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Chandler, did you have any questions? I don't.

[00:04:47] Thank you, Madam Chair. If I may, I had some questions, and I'm trying to see where they may have been implemented or they didn't need to be. I had line 10, just correct a small error. I had sent this on the 30th.

[00:05:04] I don't know if you're familiar. And then I was okay with leaving the pronouns there. It didn't sound correct, but I'm okay with leaving it there. And then line 47, my only question was genetic information.

[00:05:21] But Ms. Bolin, I think we might have discussed that already, right? Can you just refresh my memory on that? Thank you. That language is just regulation law language. It's copied directly from what is protected as status within the law.

[00:05:38] So it's the exact language that's extracted and placed in the policy. The only question I have is why would it come up? I don't know, to be honest with you. It's more about a reminder to our staff in regards to the law of the areas that are protected by the law to stay away from them.

[00:06:06] And, in fact, it shouldn't come up. So it is a reminder of that also. They're providing a professional reference. So none of the information in any of those categories should come up when providing a professional reference. Did you have a question, Ms. Chandler?

[00:06:24] No, I was just going to offer a contextualization on that issue. I could imagine a situation where someone might have genetic information about markers on their code in terms of their likelihood of having particular diseases, but because having that marker on your genetic code doesn't necessarily mean that you will, but you wouldn't want someone to be discriminated at work if they had something like that.

[00:06:51] I just find it interesting that that would even come up at all. but okay so I guess if miss Chandler is okay we'll move it to information item oh sure madam chair I'd be happy to make a motion to move you know the policy 7308 forward to the full board and I'll second that so we'll go ahead and do that thank you very much and I guess we'll move on to discussion items at this point 5.01 thank you yes ma'am we're moving right along

[00:07:23] Okay, so this evening we are bringing before the committee a discussion item in regards to time to hire. We get a lot of questions in regards to what goes into hiring candidates and individuals and the length of time by which we do so.

[00:07:47] So we are focused on continuous improvement and a commitment of recruiting, developing, supporting, and retaining top talent while ensuring competitive salaries and benefits for our workforce.

[00:08:03] And in alignment with these goals, our team is constantly reviewing data to help inform our operational practices and seeking ways to improve. So this evening, Mr. Bennett will provide you with an overview of our time to hire data.

[00:08:22] He will go over several data points and share how we have made and continue to make improvements in the time it takes to hire and bring on new employees. It is also important to note that during the 24-25 school year, our teams are focusing on improvements related to pre-boarding and onboarding.

[00:08:43] Again, as we seek to continuously improve and enhance our processes. And I do also want to highlight, before I turn it over, something we are trying to focus on, too, is level-setting expectations.

[00:09:01] We may be aware of how long something may take, but applicants or employees may not. And so we need to establish those expectations so that they're the same. And so we are working on that as well. Mr. Bennett? All right, good evening. So we have a lot of data ahead, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the end, but a lot of them will hopefully be answered throughout. So go ahead and go to the next slide, Ms. Kutch.

[00:09:30] In the next slide, I'm just showing just for representation purposes of the entire department. We're really going to be focusing tonight on the two teams in kind of the upper right, if you will. We're focusing on our operations team, and we're focusing on our staffing team.

[00:09:45] We're going to go over hiring data specific to full-time employees in the first half, and then I'm going to mirror that same setup in the second half of the presentation for substitutes. Substitutes seems to be the one where we really need to spend a lot of time doing that level setting that Ms. Bolin referred to.

[00:10:05] So go ahead and jump to, go ahead and jump a couple slides, Katie, if you would. So this first section, as I said, we're focusing on full-time. So before we kind of jump into the data, we're using two different terms to refer to very distinctly different things.

[00:10:24] We're using time to hire, and we're using time to fill. So for us, there's a big distinction, and I'll go over that in the slides. But for us, time to hire is basically the time from which a hiring manager gives us the request until we make a job offer.

[00:10:41] So that's kind of our time to hire. A principal has conducted interviews, they've let us know I want candidate X, we go through our processes, and we make an offer. So that's what we're defining as a time to hire. What I'm going to show this evening are two, what we refer to our hiring years.

[00:11:01] That's the 23-24 hiring year and the 24-25 hiring year. So I've kind of outlined the dates that go along with those. At next month's meeting, you'll be getting an onslaught of even more data regarding our hiring practices.

[00:11:16] But this kind of gives you a snapshot of what we'll be looking at tonight. So go ahead and go to the next slide. So again, we're focusing on time to hire here, which is that point of receiving a hiring request through the offer to the candidate where we have a few steps in the middle.

[00:11:34] So what I thought might be helpful is to walk the committee through what this would be like in real life. So a principal has conducted interviews for a teacher, they've come upon a final candidate, they send that to our office, a staffing coordinator receives that request, and they start to look at the application.

[00:11:53] The next, I'll call it an arrow, is they send it to one of our pre-employment specialists and they get working on a reference check. So that's contacting their current employer, their former employer, and trying to secure a reference check. Once that's completed, it comes back to that staffing coordinator, they review it, we make sure everything is aligned, and then they work up an offer.

[00:12:16] You know, looking at their resume, going with our standard hiring practices, and then they make that offer. That takes about three business days. What's really important to note here is this is external hires. This is not internal people because we wanted to be clear in our data on people who all require a reference check.

[00:12:35] someone for an internal promotion does not so we're really focusing here on those people who are external new hires into full-time positions so this is the 2324 data you can see we're at three days and then can you jump to the next one katie you can see here we've maintained the same but we're we're quite pleased with three days as a turnaround knowing what goes behind the scenes here there's a lot of phone calls that can go back and forth between our pre-employment specialists and a reference. People can be out of the office on vacation and so forth. So we're clicking through

[00:13:10] this pretty swiftly. If you'll go to the next slide, as I said earlier, we now have time to fill. So this is kind of taking that time period of, again, when we receive the hiring request to when the employee is cleared to start. So what's important here is I'm going to highlight the cleared to start part the reason we do cleared to start is we hire a lot of people in the spring that don't start for months so we hire a teacher in May well they're not going to start till August so we want to kind of use the

[00:13:47] benchmarks that help drive our practices so if we used time does if we use their start date we're going to skew the data and not really be advantageous or helpful to us so we're looking at when they're cleared so everything has happened they're cleared they're ready to start and again we're focused on those same two hiring years 23 24 and 24 25 so go ahead and jump to the next one so when we span it out you can see we add a lot more days and I'm gonna go through so this is big picture and we're gonna boil this down step by step over

[00:14:24] multiple slides into additional information but this kind of takes us to that to the next where the candidate and is now offered a job well then we send them a new hire checklist that they have to you know complete a set of things then they come in for a new hire session we conduct fingerprints they do a tv screening and so forth we wait for those clearances to come back now they're cleared to start so when we look at that whole process that takes about 24 days this is again in the 23 24 school year go ahead and jump to the 24 25 so

[00:14:57] for this one we made a little a little improvement um but again as we dig deeper into some of these you'll start to see some areas where we've identified as Miss Bolin said earlier kind of some of that pre-boarding where we think we can make some inroads so if you would go to the next one perfect so this slide my request is don't don't jump into the minutiae too much here this slide is really trying to provide that 30,000 foot view the red bars are candidates

[00:15:32] that's activities that a candidate has to do so just visually you can see some of the longest time periods are within a candidates control so this will really become apparent with the substitute one but you can also see it here where people are taking longer to complete that checklist to do to schedule their onboarding or their new hire session what we have to keep in mind is these people may be employed full-time somewhere else they may have families things there is a point where things are going to take time but what we want to do is make sure there's no barrier that we've eliminated barriers so people can get in and then that last red bar

[00:16:11] that you see at the bottom is the start date you see I believe it says nine days what's important to note and there's really fine print on here that says this data is not telling you about teachers or TAs or people who are hired cyclically because again as I shared earlier with the data we hire them and now they don't start for months so that nine days is a basic two week notice so for us that nine days isn't really an area we're overly worried about we're more concerned on how could we maybe help with the other two red bars so just again this is 2324 go ahead and scroll through 2425 Katie

[00:16:50] and you can see these are the same things you know that that onboarding time the time to come in for their start date is again hovering in that two week typical notice period but the others we've made a little bit of inroads there and again I'm gonna dig in deeper on those things with specific dates and some things we've done so go ahead and jump on here so at this point not quite this one that's okay it's fine before we jump into this I do want to kind of share globally you're gonna see some larger time periods here you see that

[00:17:28] you've already seen the 24 days we're going to dig in further but what's important to note if we kind of dig out in different industries there's a wide range of how long it takes to hire somebody across various industries I found a SHRM data point that basically referenced it can be up to 66 days to hire an executive 44 days for a non-executive so I'm not saying we're just going to say oh this is all well and good and we're moving on because we're not but it's kind of helps us have a little bit of perspective of where we're at and where we think we can make

[00:18:03] improvements. So this one here, you can kind of see the breakdown of that time period between the offer and attending a new hire, which is 14 days. So if you remember earlier, we're getting the offer out in three days. So we're on the board, we're getting that out. But here we have a little bit, we've got almost three weeks for them to go from making the offer to getting in for the new hire session so that was 14 days we made a little bit of inroad here going from 23 24 to 24 25 taking 12 days at this time period and then then if you jump to the next one this one kind of boils

[00:18:42] in even deeper so we've teased out now those 14 or 12 days respectively into making the offer and completing a new hire checklist so again it gives us data points to sort of figure out where's where's the hiccup. So, for example, you can see from the new hire checklist to the attend a session is nine days, so almost two full weeks. We want to make sure we've got ample new hire sessions available. So we don't ever want that to be an impediment, but we also have to realize, again, these could be people working full-time jobs, so they may have to take a

[00:19:17] day off or they may have to do something else. So as we continue to look at what our solutions can be this we find particularly helpful to give us a sense of how long is it taking someone to complete you know their new hire checklist but then also how long it's taking them to schedule so this is 23 24 and you'll see i believe it's a reduction in one day on each side coming into the to the 24 25 school year so again making some some inroads go ahead katie and go to the next one

[00:19:49] so this kind of gives you a sense of what a new hire has to complete these are all 11 tasks that a new hire needs to do in order to come on board so I'll talk a little bit more on on the coming slides but there are some things that have to be done before there are some things that they do when they're with us and then there are some things they can do concurrent but a lot of it really rests on timing so the TB screening that might be they couldn't get to a CVS they couldn't get to their doctor well you know all of these things kind of take time so go ahead and

[00:20:24] go to the next slide and this sort of gives us a picture of which forms and which documents are taking certain amounts of time so you can see here the i9 is taking a little bit longer than let's say the information form so again are we having people get hung up on completing the i9 is there some difficulty or challenges or is that just how long it takes and as I said earlier I talked about concurrent and what they have to do before they come in we made some changes several years ago to only needing to do those what are there five

[00:21:01] things so there's five things you see at the bottom right that's what has to be done before they can schedule so they get offered the job they accept the job they get the new hire checklist they have to do those five things and then they get an invite to schedule the session all of the other six things kind of can happen concurrently so we tried to do that to make get them in sooner again giving them the control of how swiftly they want to move into their new role with LCPS the next slide shows some similar data we did make again across the board there are some places of inroads you know a day improvement

[00:21:39] here or there overall we're we're still looking at about four business days for someone to work through this part of the process so go ahead and now we're jumping to substitutes now we get to have even more fun with data so this what I think is important to note I do want to highlight a couple things as we jump into substitutes because we're gonna be looking at two different years we're looking at that 2324 hiring year which if you remember runs through September of

[00:22:15] 23 so in July of 2023 we did some reorganization within our team and we added a supervisor to oversee substitutes so that person started in July of 23 so her biggest impacts have been really felt in the 24/25 hiring kind of moving forward and moving the needle so I just want to kind of highlight that and we've you'll see in this upcoming data we've been able to make some impacts there. So, go ahead, Katie. So, again, just to reiterate, time to hire, time to

[00:22:54] fill. The subtle differences here are because we don't necessarily receive a hiring request, if you will, we kind of start the clock when we ask for a reference check. That tells us that's when our subcentral team has reviewed the application, they've gone through, they've made a determination, this candidate is going to move forward to be hired so that's kind of our start point and then when the candidate receives the offer again we're talking about as I said earlier 22 23 and 23 24 these are functioning more in school years we kind of hire subs more alignment with a fiscal year or school

[00:23:33] year so there is some subtle differences here but again as I said earlier that supervisor started in year in the second year of this go ahead Katie so here what we're seeing is the time again to complete that reference check sometimes with our substitute applicants their applications may not be as complete there may need to be more phone calls happening back and forth with candidates back and forth with references so this does take a little bit longer jump to the next one we did make we did make some improvement here again trying to

[00:24:11] expedite our processes trying to make sure we have ample support for our substitute candidates and then I'll jump into time to fill so again remember this is to the point where they're cleared to start again starting with the point of reference ending with when they're actually cleared to start get into a classroom as a substitute same same year as we're talking about 22 23 and 2324 here go ahead to the first one you will see there is a very large time period and again I'm going to boil down into each of these where we can see it

[00:24:49] further but a lot of these things are under their control so again to reiterate what miss Bolin said we're trying hard to do some expectation set go ahead and go to the next one we did make some some pretty good improvements clicking six days off of this getting us at least a week sooner and then let's go to the visual the 30,000 foot view so here is where you really start to see what it is that is taking our substitute candidates the the longest time period you can see that's 26 on this one in particular as 26 days to complete that

[00:25:27] checklist and then eight days to attend a new hire session go ahead and go to the next one Katie so again here shave that off it's taking a little longer to schedule the new hire session than it did but it's taking less time to complete the new hire checklist but those are the things that again if a candidate is eager and wants to get on board they can go through these things as swiftly as possible and we want to make sure we are not there's no roadblocks on our side so the the impacts here go ahead go ahead Katie go a couple

[00:26:06] slides forward and again this is kind of boiling it down a little bit further where you're seeing from that offer to when they're coming in for a new hire session it's it was 28 days for 22 23 go ahead and the next one is 26 days here and then let's jump to the next one where we kind of separated out even further where you where we really get to see what are the things and you can see here it's the completion of as the high level view showed us it's the completion of that checklist of

[00:26:41] what they need to do it's taking four weeks in 22 23 shaved down to three weeks for 23 24 but those are the areas where we think we can kind of dig in and how do we get how do we get candidates to complete that more swiftly but also making sure they understand that from that point of offer forward it's really incumbent upon them like jump in and if you need help making sure people know go ahead to the next one this again it's just that visual of what has to be completed because whether you're a substitute or a full-time employee you're

[00:27:19] completing all of the same things to come on board all the same clearances all the same form so let's go to the next one where it kind of teases out how long each form takes so you can see here this one we do have data I don't know if you noticed or not on the full-time one we don't have a good data point for the TB test for substitutes we do we track it so that seems to be the thing that's taking the longest so it's either difficulty getting in to get a TB screening or they're not as expeditious to do that but that definitely helps us

[00:27:55] know kind of what are the what are the long sticking points again looking across the board which which are the forms or the documents that people are having the most trouble with go ahead you can go to the next one Katie that's again just the 23 24 so kind of to to wrap up i thought it might help to talk about some of the things we've we've done i shared earlier we we put in place a supervisor to really jump in with both feet to to dealing with substitutes we've already made significant improvements in our communication

[00:28:34] with substitutes creating a landing page that walks them through it that happened in the fall of 2023 just recently we started adding some of these dates we had this data we started adding in some of our dates so they know here's a place where you if you're really eager you can you can move on forward but here's also maybe how long this typically takes just to again try to get ahead in that communication go ahead to the last one so these are kind of some global things we've done both as a department as a division in an effort to expedite we did an HR ERP

[00:29:13] reorganization a couple years ago that kind of really separated out some of our functions so our teams our operational team we have a team that's really dedicated toward all this onboarding and we have a team that's sitting on the back end that does a lot of the data entry for the new hires and we've found that that's been helpful we implemented an electronic reference form to try to expedite you know those three days i don't know how we're going to get it much below three days but but we we put that in place we're always monitoring new hire sessions to make sure that's

[00:29:48] not an impediment to someone coming in we rolled out let's talk as a division which i'm sure you're very well aware of and hr was a super early adopter of let's use that as our medium so we've got our landing page candidates can interact with us through let's talk substitute candidates any candidates or employees that have specific questions so that's been helpful to keep that that dialogue we've increased some of our notifications through the system as I mentioned earlier the substitute landing page the flyer just different ways to get in front of candidates that are

[00:30:27] looking for jobs we are currently as you're aware under the very large-scale ERP system review so we're our eyes are open to the prospects are there places to help us with the onboarding with the pre-boarding with you know adding some efficiencies and then a couple years ago we added part-time onboarding assistant and then just recently we added a couple more just to help make sure our our paperwork is clean people have access if they need assistance if they need support to doing the application to completing the paperwork

[00:31:04] we don't you know we know we have some applicants that even have difficulty with those four or five items to do we want to make sure we have their resources to support them to complete that so again trying to remove those types of barriers in our application process so I think that's enough talking for me at the moment and I'm happy to feel any questions did you have any questions here I do thank you well so thank you for the presentation and I would like to say well done improving over the course of those two years

[00:31:43] making incremental change and it shows in your data and I think that that's well done for the good of the division I was curious if you could tell me a little bit more about how you're setting expectations with potential hires it or I guess they are officially hires at that point what incentives do you have to ask them to complete the necessary materials and then you know in an efficient time so some of that is I guess I'm still on is the the kind of the

[00:32:22] step-by-step for substitutes where we just recently added in kind of the days just so they know here's what you might be able to expect but we also utilize our onboarding assistant if we see people that are not so some of our efforts are how do we prompt how do we prompt some of those people but also recognizing you could have college students that started an application but they're not here yet so some of these gaps are explainable and understandable if they've started their application they've been hired but okay I'm four hours away and I can't attend a new hire session for till my spring break

[00:33:00] until this till that but it's making sure we're we're properly sort of tapping people on the shoulder and saying where are you at like let's make sure you complete that new hire checklist I appreciate that proactiveness and and definitely think that's very helpful and and it is certainly easy to see as in the data set that you've collected that there are always going to be things that are outside of our control that said I would love to hear more about the new higher sessions and and specifically how frequently they're occurring and if

[00:33:34] there are specific seasons where they're more active so I will begin and then I will let miss Davis jump in so we do increase them seasonally so you know we do mass hiring to start the following school year so we do sort of monitor that flow you know how many actually have the data so during most of the time we do three during the year and then mid May until the end of August we do four a week and they generally run from 9 a.m. to probably about four they wrap up at that time and we offer 15 minute increments so we do offer multiple on

[00:34:12] top of the the one-stop shop so we offer for certain positions as well where those are separate. Wow that's fascinating. So three or four a week throughout most of the year and most of them take all day. Correct. Thank you for that information I just have two more questions Madam Chair. On the hiring process impacts page is this like a word map where the circles are bigger because they're having more of an impact or is it just an interesting visual I'm just it's just something I'm curious about like I don't know if I have the

[00:34:48] answer to that question because I believe nine was one of the categories that took more time so I was just curious well I guess it's a word cloud where it's like the something is happening with more impacted yeah yeah yeah the ones that are taking longer yeah yeah that's thank you for that clarification and then I my last question is what are your continued goals for improvement so if I can I'll start and then I'm happy to have them add you know part of

[00:35:27] what I spoke to when I opened this presentation is really ensuring that expectations are aligned and when I say expectations it's it almost comes across a little bit negative but I just mean clearly communicated right an employee expects one thing while meanwhile we understand the process so we expect something totally different and if we haven't clearly communicated what the expectations are we're still at fault and so we're really working on clearly communicating those expectations in fact

[00:36:07] and we we probably should have included and I'm happy to provide the board with the link to it, but we are starting this with our substitute hires. The applicant page on the website that kind of walks them through the application process now also has sort of a similar timeline or the length of time it may take for each of those steps and highlights which

[00:36:40] steps are within their control um so we we really are trying to demonstrate the fact of some of it may be us absolutely and we are taking ownership and trying to figure out what we can do to ensure that we speed up those uh those times and that ability but some of it's on them and we want them to know which parts are on them and that they then can take that placement so that's one we are trying to do a similar thing for regular applicants.

[00:37:14] The problem there is sort of similar to what Mr. Bennett said about licensed hires. The various positions could potentially have various lengths of time for which things could occur. So that's another way.

[00:37:31] The other thing we're really trying to do is do this differentiation between pre-boarding and onboarding. and the period of time that we take care of candidate care. So some of this is due to capacity and the inability to continually follow up.

[00:37:55] And so how do we navigate that we're not going to have more people, but we can automate some of these things, right? What can we automate? And like Mr. Bennett mentioned, we're currently going through this ERP project.

[00:38:13] And so really doing this data set and research really is helping to guide us, too, on the questions of what else could the system offer to where we're ensuring that we're communicating. Because it really does come down to communication. I feel like if our candidates feel communicated, too, they're less likely to get upset about the length of time.

[00:38:38] That's kind of where I will stop. We have a focus group internally. It is also one of the superintendent's post-entry plan goals, so we are heavily focused on that. But I'm happy to, if anyone wants to add anything. The only thing that I would like to add is we are also looking at all of our email communications that come from the system, our automated communications, to make sure that they're clear, concise, and that they make sense for the applicants.

[00:39:07] So we're continually monitoring those as well, as Lisa mentioned, mirroring kind of the subcentral process for what to expect after you apply. And then also we're looking at implementing next steps, clear flyers for individual groups because transportation varies from what a custodial applicant, right, and so on and so forth.

[00:39:28] And so creating specific flyers for those groups with contact information to help them have a better understanding of the process. Well, thank you all. Can I just add one more thing, too? Something in the conversations, too, that we've had is we don't want to assume what the applicant wants to know or the information they want to receive or what will be helpful also.

[00:39:55] So this year, I am really working to get out to schools to go to faculty meetings and get in front of a larger staff population. And in so doing, two of the questions I am asking really are around the post-entry plan projects that we're working on.

[00:40:18] And one of them really is about those staff members who were most recently hired and what their applicant experience was. The one thing that they felt was the most helpful and then the one area that they felt was the most frustrating.

[00:40:36] And my hope is to kind of be able to then go back to some of those individuals and maybe have them come up with some way that we could communicate better. Well, that's very thoughtful. Thank you so much for the information. If I may, somebody that's applied for jobs before and is a recruiter, sometimes it's the tracking system.

[00:41:05] What's your tracking system again? you told me before but it's education something yeah we use it's through power schools it is talent ed talent ed yes okay I'm very familiar with different tracking systems is this specific to education this is this is specific it is and it we just recently transitioned to talent ed in the last two years three years, last three years. As far as that transition, does it offer, if a recruiter goes in and looks

[00:41:41] at the status of an application, you can, you should be able to pull up, you know, choices to send that person complete your application, complete your forms, or anything like that. I'm just going to tell you, applying for a job, you want a job, okay? You want to work. So as far as uh incentives go to get people to fill out their paperwork it should be an automatic thing if i'm looking for a job i'm going to fill out that paperwork okay so maybe i might have missed a document so somebody goes in a recruiter goes in and looks at it and oh they're missing the i-9

[00:42:18] let me just send them a little note or it's an automatic thing that you can a drop down right i don't know if you have that in this um in this system um do you i'm just curious but i have a questions. Let me just make one point of clarification. This data is not applicant data.

[00:42:38] This is once they've been hired, once we've made the job offer. And then pushing them to do the paperwork after. Yes. So when you were referring to the days to complete it, this isn't I'm an eager applicant. I get my application completed. That all happens within talent ed. Now principal looks, recruiter looks, does just what you said. Okay, here are my active applicants. I've made decisions on I'm going to I'm going to interview these six I make a final selection now that's where this kind of kicks off so all the data that's before you is that point where a candidate's

[00:43:13] been selected does that make that make sense so we're not we're not beating them down up front to do their application we've already offered them a job and said we'd like you to be a teacher or so you've offered them a job and they're still hesitating on the paperwork is it in my do they understand they don't get the job unless they do the paperwork correct that's when i that's the disconnect with me i'm trying to figure that out because i'm a current recruiter and i have trouble finding civil engineers um which is a you know our bridge engineers um that's my struggle um

[00:43:50] but with education as far as teachers and and bus drivers and admin or whatever you're looking to hire I'm just if you've hired them already I'm a little bit I mean to give them an incentive to do their paperwork no they should if they want the job they should be doing the paperwork so within talent ed I'm thinking you could still send them reminders I don't know I mean as far as your staff I don't know how many recruiters you have right now I know or actually my next question was how many positions do you have open at one time that these recruiters have to work with at the same

[00:44:29] time and onboard people at the same time? Or is that separate and that goes through HR? Or is it pushed off to HR? There are so many details. I always like to say I was separate from HR. I'm recruiting. I just bring them in and then I throw them to HR, right? So I guess these are details I want to know because i applied to lcps not too long ago and i applied for like four positions and i was warned ahead of time you know when i spoke to somebody at lcps that i was going to apply it may take up to six months they did tell me that uh it'll take up to six months and then

[00:45:08] with the processing after that you're talking about um you know you're saying new sessions but are they orientations or are they what do you mean by new sessions no these are new hire sessions which are getting my fingerprints taken because we need to run a criminal background check that's required by code it's taking their picture for a badge it's verifying that the information they have filled out is correct so it's looking at the I-9 that they submitted through our online system it's making sure that's accurate every T is crossed and I is dotted and it's making sure all the rest of their paperwork is properly completed for them

[00:45:44] to be an employee that's what it is it's not onboarding in the sense of an orientation to their job and as as Miss Bolin referenced in and Miss Davis spoke to some of our goals for this next year and in future years or how do we improve that pre-boarding period to keep them engaged and make sure that candidates know or these future employees know what their resources are if we're hiring for custodians and there's a language barrier we want to make sure they there isn't a barrier that they know we've got people available that can support them so those are the things we're going to be digging into what's behind so this is

[00:46:24] this is super helpful data to let us know okay here are the places here are some of the hang-ups and now we're gonna have to dig deeper into what are the more specifics and then what actions come from that what systems we use I reference the new ERP just because we're always looking for their automated ways to connect with people but sometimes just in the last couple of days I get it at the roots of sometimes candidates have struggles with technology sometimes there's language so we also have to make sure we're sensitive to that and making

[00:46:58] making things available supports available yeah I just oh I'm sorry no I just I just find it interesting it all goes with the job and it's not it's not uh being done but um again you know I don't know if you're recruiting and then it goes off to HR and then they just take care of it is it separated um honestly I think everybody goes through what you're going through and I appreciate that you are trying to figure out how to move

[00:47:31] quicker um I'm sure you've been going through this for years for many many many years um in my in my experience i've gone through this for many many years um and it's not just my company i think every company in the area goes through uh especially if they're a civil engineering firm trying to find those people what can we do to to improve to move them along and that sort of thing so um i appreciate uh the presentation but i just feel like there's so much involved um and i cap

[00:48:06] But human capital, I mean, you need people to also be able to go in and follow up constantly to make sure everything's going through. So I don't know how many people you have to do that, but it just seems like a lot. So I'm just trying to think if I had any other questions here.

[00:48:28] I think a lot of them were answered. And my other thing is, too, my other question was, do you lose people because of the paperwork they have to fill out? I mean, you have to do that with every job. I mean, that's certainly a possibility, but again, our goals are to make sure people feel connected to us and that we're, again, we're going to be focusing on that pre-boarding to make sure people feel that connection and we keep that connection.

[00:48:54] We do it with our teacher hires that are coming, but I think we can continue to improve in that because people are accepting jobs very soon for next year. So that, to us, is the big next area of focus. It's the pre-boarding. It's keeping people engaged, not so much the fear of the paperwork, but to make sure they continue to feel a part of us.

[00:49:17] Even if they've accepted a job in January that doesn't start until August and they live in central Pennsylvania, we need them to recognize they're an LCPS employee. They're a part of our greater community even before they get here. So those are the areas we're going to be focusing in on.

[00:49:34] How do we reduce some of these days? How do we make sure people stay engaged? I'm sure people fall off because they struggle with the paperwork, but we want to make sure that's not because we said we couldn't help you with it, but the reality is, and sometimes when you look at substitutes, these people may be working five or six part-time jobs, so maybe they threw in an application, they got an acceptance, we moved forward, but they weren't really interested anymore.

[00:50:02] Or, I got another part-time gig for a little while, so I'm less motivated to fill it out. Like, there's lots of factors that kind of play into a candidate's motivation. So, but again, we want to make sure they understand, as Ms. Bolin referred to in that sort of walk you through.

[00:50:23] You'll have to send the link, but it walks you through a nice journey of what it looks like. And then, as she said, the team just added in some of these details just to give a pulse check of, okay, if I'm a substitute and I go to this landing page, I can sort of see, oh, well, this typically takes this long.

[00:50:41] Or this could take this long if I'm eager, if I'm, you know, jump right on it. Or it could take a little bit longer, that it's really within their control. But what we really want them to also know are the things in our control as an employer, how long they might take.

[00:50:58] Because, you know, we all live it every day, so it's kind of second nature. But to a candidate that may not know, it might take three to five or seven or nine days to do a reference check. They may not know that, so I've applied, and I don't hear in 48 hours, and now I'm frustrated with LCPS because I didn't get a sub-job offer in 48 hours.

[00:51:20] We're trying to lay some of that foundation out there of how long some of these things are going to take. And your big push is the spring to get everybody in for August, pretty much. For a large chunk of our hires. Now, there are other hires we do all year long.

[00:51:37] We hire bus drivers, custodians, school nutrition, 12-month positions all year long. But there is a big push in the spring for the August teacher hires. And my last question is, because you have a whole process with, you know, that it takes a certain amount of time to just get them on board, What about those hires that, I need them like yesterday, you know, those, you find somebody and the hiring manager needed them in the office or teaching like yesterday.

[00:52:12] Are you able to push somebody forward quicker? As long as the candidate is engaging with us and getting it done. If they do the paperwork, if the hiring manager says, I need them Monday and it's Wednesday, are you able to move that quickly?

[00:52:30] Because I go through that all the time. I'm just curious. We're only able to move as quickly as the fingerprints come back cleared. There's some other limitations, too, right? Like we have to make sure the fingerprints are cleared. We also have to make sure if it's a CPS-related position, especially, but in all positions, that the CPS clearance comes back.

[00:52:54] So there are some other things, and most times those come back relatively quickly, but not always. And there's no way to push them forward. And those two are out of our control. Yeah, so that's a big part of it, too, as to why things take longer.

[00:53:14] But anyway, thank you so much for this presentation. I really appreciate it. Did you have any other questions, Ms. Chandler? No. Sorry.

[00:53:31] If there's new business, Ms. Chandler? No, ma'am. Okay. So with that, I guess we will adjourn for today, and thank you so much. Appreciate it.

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