In the recent past, the student affairs field has been experiencing a shortage of candidates for entry-level positions. At placement conferences across the country there have been more positions than candidates in attendance. Oshkosh Placement Exchange, for example, one of the larger regional placement conferences in the country, had 458 positions open at the 1999 conference and 430 candidates in attendance. If every candidate had been offered and accepted a position, over 6% of the jobs not filled. While we know that not every candidate was offered a position and some of the positions were filled at other placement conferences, there were and will be campuses that welcome students in the fall without a full staff.
This lack of interest in the field will prompt schools to adopt more aggressive and innovative recruitment strategies. Technology will be at the forefront of the approaches to recruitment as school look to make their student affairs position more and more attractive to the smaller market of candidates.
One of the schools that has jumped to the forefront using technology for recruiting is the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Office of Residence Life. Candidates interested in potential employment as an assistant hall director or a hall director are sent an interactive CD-ROM describing not only the position and the Office of Residence Life, but also the University.
This CD-ROM takes the place of the traditional mailings that are sent to interested candidates. The candidate is immersed into the Office of Residence Life and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater all from the comfort of a personal computer. Traditional mailings sent to interested candidates shows only pictures and words, but through the process of using an interactive CD-ROM; sound, video and a comprehensive description make the candidate feel as if they are being wooed by a Fortune 500 company.
One of the first features that makes this way of recruitment even more appealing is the minimal system requirements for performance. The program is run using Macromedia and QuickTime. If the computer that the CD is being viewed on does not have either of these, they are installed for the user off of the CD. All that is left to do is sit back and watch as the Office of Residence Life at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater unfolds before you.
The interactive segments of the CD-ROM are broken down into six parts for the candidate to explore. Within each area, delineation is made between professional and graduate positions. This allows one CD-ROM to be produced for both positions, saving on costs for University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the CD-ROM to be retained by an individual or residence life department for future use with both perspective graduates and professionals.
Each area has a narration along with some full motion video or multimedia presentation. Viewers are able to manipulate the video to review parts again or fast forward to other parts of the video. Each video is approximately two minutes in length with the narration talking over the entire video presentation. Highlights of each section are listed down the side and all of the narration is available in text that is scrollable for those with no sound cards or hearing impairments.
Each of the segments covers an area that a candidate would be interested in knowing more about should they seek employment with UW-Whitewater:
All of the features of this CD-ROM are inclusive of any mailing that would be sent to interested candidates; in fact, they go above and beyond. Through the innovative use of technology, you walk on campus, tour facilities and see the residence life staff at work, all from the comfort of a home or office computer. This CD-ROM and products like it may soon replace the paper mailings sent to perspective candidates. Regardless if this becomes a very successful recruiting tool, the UW-Whitewater Office of Residence Life has taken large steps to insure that perspective candidates will have a unique experience as they learn more about the department and the University. This recruitment tool may not be able to makeup for the job crisis we are beginning to face, but it is one University's attempt to make themselves and their residence life department stand out to candidates.
For more information please contact:
Sandi Scott Duex
Assistant Director of Residence Life for Residential Education
Suite 200 Goodhue Hall
Whitewater, WI 53190
Office Phone: (262) 472-5275
duexs@mail.uww.edu