At your institution, it may be that different schools and departments each follow their own individual approach to faculty hiring. And while you might consider this deferential policy to be harmless, like all choices, it has costs.
Georgetown University discovered those costs the hard way.
“Across our 10 schools, we had multiple processes for faculty recruitment: we had people using shared drives and email, people using Interfolio Faculty Search, others using competitors to Interfolio, and still others using mail only,” explained Charlie Leonhardt, Georgetown University’s Director of Online Initiatives and Innovation.
“When you have this kind of Wild West, it’s impossible to gather all the demographic data from all of the processes across the University to see how well you’re doing in attracting diverse faculty,” Charlie said.
Moreover, what data the different schools and departments did collect had to be manually typed by human resources staff into the University’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, Workday. That process was slow and inefficient.
“As a result, we had incomplete reporting of new faculty’s demographic data and an incomplete picture of the success of our diversity efforts,” Charlie said.
Faced with these challenges, Georgetown University turned to its longtime partner in higher education software, Interfolio, for a solution that would enable consistency and automation — and thereby save time while also supporting the University’s diversity goals.
Making faculty hiring and data collection consistent and seamless
As a user of Interfolio’s Review, Promotion & Tenure since 2012, Georgetown University knows that Interfolio creates intuitive, versatile platforms for higher education processes. Moreover, a few departments were already using Interfolio’s Faculty Search module and liked it.
So, when the University decided to replace its patchwork of approaches to faculty hiring, administrators decided it made the most sense to adopt Faculty Search across the University.
Not only would this create consistency, but it would also enable Georgetown University to connect Workday to faculty recruitment. That’s because Faculty Search comes with application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable it to connect to and communicate with other software, including third-party ERP software.
The API integration between Faculty Search and Workday at Georgetown University has made the faculty hiring process much easier for departments, candidates, and administrators.
“Interfolio Faculty Search provides a consistent experience for all applicants,” Charlie said. “In addition, the integration between our ERP and Interfolio significantly reduces data entry. All of the applicant data is keyed into Interfolio by the applicant, and the data flows electronically to our Workday human resources system, so there’s no re-keying of data.”
And whereas before Georgetown University had incomplete and isolated pools of new faculty demographic data across campus, the university now has one central and complete source of demographic data, gathered in Interfolio and then automatically sent to and stored in Workday.
“Our Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity & Affirmative Action is thrilled with this solution because it provides an easy and thorough way to collect demographic data from faculty applicants,” Charlie said.
How Interfolio’s API helps Faculty Search and Workday talk to one another
Before Georgetown University implemented Faculty Search across campus, faculty search committees would conduct their search, hire a candidate, and then create a placeholder job requisition within Workday that would never get posted publicly.
As Emily Fitzgerald, a Human Capital Management Senior Business Analyst with Georgetown University, explained, administrators would then create a fake job application for the candidate the department wanted to hire. Administrators would move this application through the steps within Workday all the way to the hiring stage, at which point the administrators would have to manually enter all of the selected candidate’s information and data.
Now with Workday and Faculty Search connected via the API, faculty search committees first create a job requisition within Workday, which then “triggers the integration to create a job posting in Interfolio, where the faculty search process takes place,” Emily explained.
Once the faculty search committee selects a candidate to hire, that selected candidate’s data is automatically sent from Interfolio into Workday, which then enables the offer and onboarding processes.
“So rather than the HR rep having to manually create a candidate record and key in all the biographical and demographic data as well as upload any references and other supporting documents, all of that information and data flow into Workday automatically from Interfolio, and then the search committee and human resources staff can move forward to hiring and onboarding within the Workday platform,” Emily said.
Because of the API in Faculty Search, Georgetown University can also move applicant data into its business intelligence (BI) software to analyze trends, such as how well the school is doing in attracting a diverse candidate pool.
“This BI analysis is something we haven’t been able to do in a comprehensive way, and we’re thrilled about the opportunity to be able to do it,” Charlie said.
If you want to learn more about how Interfolio can help your higher education software tools talk to one another, share data, and drive insights, we would love to hear from you.
About Interfolio
Conceived by academics for academics, Interfolio is an education technology company headquartered in Washington, DC, USA and in Cambridge, England, UK. Founded in 1999, Interfolio operates the acclaimed Faculty Information System, the Researchfish impact assessment platform, and the widely used Dossier service. Over 400 clients based in 15 countries choose Interfolio’s technology for hiring and recruitment, academic appointments and timelines, activity data reporting, faculty reviews and promotions, and research impact analysis. For more information about Interfolio, please contact us below.
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