Creating a more streamlined process for candidates, departments and HR

HR's recruitment project team have been reviewing how we advertise vacancies. A key document is the candidate brief, which contains information on the role, the department and the University.

Following the Rapid Improvement Event on staff recruitment in November and further discussions with a group of pilot departments, we have decided to stop using candidate briefs and provide this information in a different way.

Our new approach should be more efficient, still allow for departmental flexibility and provide candidates with information in a more focused manner. None of the content will be lost but will be provided in a different way:

What will change?

Information about the role
At present, departments complete a job template containing the job description (JD) and person specification (PS) which we transfer to a MS Publisher template to create the candidate brief.

We will introduce a new job template, which recruiting managers will use to supply the JD and PS content in the same way as they currently do. Once reviewed, this can quickly be turned into a PDF ready to be attached to the job advert. This will provide the applicant with a succinct role-focused document and speed up processing in HR.

Information about the department
Currently, managers have to submit departmental information each time they recruit. We again copy and paste this information into the candidate brief template, as well as making any image changes requested.

Under the new approach, each department will have its own page on the recruitment website (https://jobs.york.ac.uk). We will work with each department to create this content, which can include your own imagery and links. This provides applicants with a more dynamic presentation of departmental information and avoids duplication of effort for you.

Information about the University
The University section of the candidate brief duplicates information available on https://jobs.york.ac.uk. We will direct applicants to these pages instead. Applicants will access this rather than the candidate brief, meaning they can navigate more freely and we only have to maintain one source of information.

When will this happen?

We will be working with you in cohorts so we can give sufficient time to the creation of your departmental pages, beginning with the first departments in March.

More information

We hope you will find this a positive change, in terms of applicant experience and in terms of efficiency. If you have any questions or comments in the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Jenny Stonier at jenny.stonier@york.ac.uk.