Recruiter Implementation:

Transcription

1 Recruiter Implementation: Pitfalls and Successes Christy Thomson Associate Director of Admissions & Advising, Technology Greg MacPhee Business Analyst, Administrative Information Systems

2 Goals For Today Take something back to your campus, regardless of what software you have Learn from our successes and failures Discuss Recruitment and Prospecting Open dialogue- Please ask questions and share as we go along! Our ulterior motive: To start a Recruiter sub-group (aka support group) to tackle Recruiter questions and issues.

3 Pre-Recruiter, Recruitment and Admissions Prospecting was done from an Excel Spreadsheet or Access Database Very little communication with prospective students Paper transcripts and SAT scores Online Application was a web-form which was sent through an , printed, and hand entered into Colleague Admissions and Advising Office was doing manual data entry for approximately 8,000 applications per year.

4 What is Recruiter? Recruiter is a solution that greatly enhances the recruitment capabilities of admissions offices and the staff members. This is accomplished by having suspect management capability, event marketing and management, operational reporting for both management and recruitment staff, and better communication tools. Recruiter leverages the technology of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to provide a comprehensive solution. Recruiter is designed to work with Colleague or another Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

5 Preparing For Implementation What we wish we would have known: Applications: Before you start implementation, know your applications inside and out. Contact Research office to determine what you report on and how it needs to be asked on the application. Does that information need to go to Colleague? Processes: Think about the processes in your admissions office that already work-- will Recruiter make it better or cause more work? If it s not broken, don t fix it. Don t hold on to processes just because you ve always done it that way. Recruiter is a great opportunity to make processes more efficient. Customizations can make your life more challenging. What is REALLY happening? Not what everyone THINKS is happening! What do you do if you don t have a process? Key Stakeholders: Involve front line staff in on meetings valuable input on what is REALLY happening Let key players on campus know what s happening PR, Research Office, other departments Communication Key Players: IT and Admissions

6 Implementation: It all Sounded So Easy Recruiter talks to Colleague, but they don t always communicate very well!! This was our biggest problem when we went live. You must have the support of IT to make this happen. Brain dump from Ellucian folks to IT staff need to know how to add things when it breaks or everyone wants to add 15 more fields to the application! Other Tips: Consistency: Work with one consultant who knows your needs and what has already been set up in the system. We worked with multiple consultants (who were all great), but they did not take ownership for our project and didn t always know what was already done. Documentation: Document everything you do, as it is difficult to find Ellucian documentation that will work for you

7 Hours Saved, Hours Spent Hours Saved In one month, 1,000 students filled out their application online. Multiply that by 10 minutes for a person to enter 1 application= 10,000 minutes (approximately 166 hours) From Go Live Date on May 8, 2013 through September 13, 2013 (Census), 3,000+ students applied for Fall 2013 and 950+ applied for Summer 2013 using Recruiter. (For those of you doing the math, that s about 658 hours!!) Hours Spent Implementation Day to day Correcting errors Student questions Training: Ellucian provided minimal training. Train the Trainer model: we are still training staff Constant training

8 Application Types Open and Selective Admissions Programs Traditional (Delivered) Automatically exports colleague to ERP Combined our Freshman Focus (incoming freshman) and Early Entrance applications (concurrent enrollment) with general application Honors (Developed in-house) Going live soon Limitations AH/Nursing (Delivered.sort of) Waiting to implement Recruiter 3.0 Limitations English Institute (Delivered) Continuing Education Program for ESL students F-1 Student Application (Developed in-house) Continuing Education Program for ESL students

9 Going Live We were scheduled to go live several times until it actually happened There is constant maintenance and monitoring Started with the application and are now adding the bells and whistles Things we never thought about (ex. some existing Colleague reports were pulling different fields) Everything is Recruiter s fault!!

10 Moving Forward May need to reexamine job positions and responsibilities Front line data entry is minimal, but now are helping with students Admissions staff spending more time prospecting Need at least one lead in the Admissions Office and one lead in IT Prospecting and Recruitment Leveraging data we never had before. Prospects who create accounts (events and applications) Students who start an application, but never submit Implementing Additional Applications Honors application Nursing and Allied Health Applications F-1 Application

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