Staffing Services Recruitment & Retention Update

• Julienne Dean, Assistant Director for Staffing Services, Central HR.
• Slides to be circulated from Julienne.  
• Staffing Services team reports to Ronnie Haas in Strategic Sourcing.

Julienne's Team Provides:

• Full cycle support for searches
• Training

The great resignation → the great reshuffling

Some factors:

• Population aging / retirement
• More people self-employed
• Immigration is down
• New jobs being added (315k new jobs nationally created just in August)

Unemployment rates are low: 3.5% federal; 3.6% for MA.

Institutions are slower to react to market forces (e.g. pay scale).

Hiring processes are slow / not nimble and lose candidates as a result.

@ MIT 496 jobs are open (as of 10/17/22), compared to 346 open pre-pandemic (March of 2020).

Applicant pools dropped 15% over prior year.

Harder to compete with jobs that are similar across the area (administrative).

Paid subscriptions to “recruiter lite”, but trouble to recruit.

Utilize runner-up candidates.

“Boutique service”, on request check box in req if want service. Team handles about 25% of open jobs at varying levels of support.

Can your team respond to need/demand? This summer reached capacity, 1st time it happened.

3 yr. termination rate for hires using central HR services vs. not = 20% variance.

Impact of hybrid environment - is that a factor? Yes, higher cost of living. Adds another dimension to the issue.

Retention of current employees:

• Increased visibility of internal job portal.
• “Featured Jobs” - right now finance and accounting jobs.
• New page on the website called “Discover MIT” - adds more about DEI, benefits, community, etc. / helps people see themselves here.
• Workshop to launch on internal job search tips.
• Increased FTE for career counselor.

Working hard to enhance visibility of MIT jobs

HR Twitter feed posts regularly

Presence at Job Fairs

Recruitment

• Are we getting fewer good external candidates? Will get back to us.
• Are we reaching out to candidates / have a pipeline? Yes, we are (try to be careful about poaching).
• Thoughts on hiring packages from central MIT? No discussions at this time / not sure there is funding.
• Are hiring bonuses allowed if funded by DLC? Yes. Elizabeth approves all bonuses - don’t offer out of the gate / keep in back pocket. Needs to be a reasonable amount based on comp. Don’t like to say no, but need to be thoughtful that we have no standard bonus program. “Comp is the key”.
• CA & NY passed a law mandating salary ranges be posted - where are we with that? We do not have a statement on this yet. OK to put in your posting. Some external sites have an algorithm showing inaccurate data (e.g. on Indeed).

Are there more ways to leverage data (e.g. a keyword search in resumes, etc.)? Central HR can but the community does not have access (for internal privacy reasons). Maybe by an “opt in”. Larger discussion on privacy. Opportunities for training, e.g. how to export to Excel.

Lack of response is a top complaint - too long between interview cycles to keep candidates.

Need candidates to hit the ground running. Can we develop a pipeline that has experience / certifications, etc.

Retention

• Financial constraints to retention. Reacting to market forces violates MEPA.
• Lateral moves in the same job grade may not have a change in compensation.
• Transition to retirement / part-time. Can we modify the contract w/ NextSource to provide data on past employees who worked at MIT.

Market research on competitive pay is underway.

People on soft money - how to find opportunities to place them in other units at MIT.

Why are people leaving MIT?

• Pay
• Remote work.
• Losing top performers.
• RAS has low attrition. Added headcount last year - had a great candidate pool. Flexibility is key.
• Workload is so intense.
• Lost quality of life.

How do we pool resources and reassign staff from programs that end? Provost Office is thinking about this. Career counselor at MIT (Michelle King) can help. We don’t have visibility into talent planning down the road.