Applicants Flood Job Openings

Imagine Gina King’s surprise when she realized 67 people were vying to become the director of communications at the University of Arkansas’ school of architecture.

“I have been involved in job interviews and search committees for 10 years,” said King, the director of news and editorial communications in the university relations department, “and I’ve never been involved with anything like that.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Wow, it must not be good out there.'”

By “out there,” King meant the job market, a steadily swelling pool of highly educated, well-qualified candidates willing to duke it out – in a figurative sense, at least – for jobs they might not previously have considered. The result has been a wealth of options, with some collateral headaches, for human resources managers in almost all kinds of businesses.

There is perhaps no better example of the balancing act human resources managers are performing in Northwest Arkansas, however, than the UA. With more than 3,800 full-time and 1,400 part-time workers, the UA trails only Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. in terms of the largest employers in Northwest Arkansas.

With unemployment in the Northwest Arkansas metro area up from 3.6 percent in October 2008 to 5.3 percent as of Oct. 31 of this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the UA has been saturated with job applications. Beth Arbuthnot, the UA human resources department’s director for classification/compensation/employment, didn’t hesitate when asked for an example of the UA’s flood of applications.

While her department typically processes 100 to 150 applications per week, it recently processed more than 100 on a single Monday.

“We’ve posted things on Friday and by Monday, we’d have at least 30 or 40 applicants,” Arbuthnot said.

The only thing more surprising than the quantity of applicants, Arbuthnot said, has been the quality of many of the resumes.

“We’re seeing people who have master’s degrees applying for positions that don’t really need that level of education,” Arbuthnot said. “We’re seeing people who have really strong computer skills, who are very proficient at what they do. We’re seeing people who have years of supervisory experience.

“We’re seeing people who are very well-rounded, very experienced, who know how to work, who have demonstrated through their work history an obvious work ethic.

“We’re talking about quality applicants.”

Shared Experiences
And while the UA might provide one of the best examples of the challenges human resources managers are facing, it is not alone. Companies big and small contacted for this story reported experiences similar to those encountered by King and Arbuthnot.

Washington Regional Medical Center, which ranked seventh on the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s most recent list of largest area employers with 2,200 workers, also has been deluged by job-seekers. According to Steve Percival, vice president of human resources, Washington Regional had received more than 17,000 applications (Note: Some people applied for more than one job) through Dec. 2.

“I’m amazed at just the sheer volume in terms of the number of hits we get,” Percival said, while noting Washington Regional received about 13,600 applications in 2008 and 10,700 in 2007. “It certainly gives us a chance to get the best.”

Smaller operations relate comparable stories. Rockfish Interactive, an award-winning, full-service interactive agency in Rogers, has seen an uptick in well-qualified applicants, according to director of human resources Allyson Malone, who said the company has expanded its number of employees from 35 to 63 over the last year.

“The candidate pool is much richer now,” she said.

That’s true, Malone added, whether the opening is for a Web designer or an accountant. The company has been looking for an assistant controller, for example, and has received significantly more applications from impressive candidates than when the same position was open about 18 months ago.

And what does Malone look for in such a situation?

“For me, it’s a couple of things,” she said. “First, they have to have the base set of skills needed for the job that’s available. After that, it’s a lot about their communication abilities.

“We ask our candidates to apply online and write a short blurb explaining why they would be a good fit. If there’s a typo in that, they’re dead in the water. If they can creatively put a few sentences together, on the other hand, that’s a plus.”

Staying Put
Another effect of the economic downturn, Arbuthnot and others said, is less turnover within an entity. With a national November unemployment rate of 10 percent, up from a 4.9 percent national rate in December 2007, people are less likely to leave secure jobs.

“People just aren’t leaving their jobs,” Arbuthnot said. “We’re not having people go out the back end.”

That includes a range of workers, Arbuthnot said, from those who postpone retirement to those who might not accept a job in a new location because they can’t afford to take the kind of financial hit that’s become so prevalent in a depressed housing market. Arbuthnot said she’s heard similar stories from colleagues at other colleges and universities.

With that in mind, Arbuthnot said her department’s greatest challenge actually isn’t handling the increase in job applicants, but planning for the time when the pool begins to shrink. At that point, when companies like Wal-Mart and Tyson begin to expand anew, the UA wants to make sure it retains the quality employees it’s now hiring.

To do that, Arbuthnot said, UA administrators are trying to stress and improve the positives the school has to offer. That includes everything from promoting an enjoyable and productive work environment to emphasizing perks like good health insurance and tuition breaks for employees and their family members.

“We want to make sure if they face that decision (about leaving), they’re going to have to think long and hard about it,” Arbuthnot said.

Malone expressed a similar sentiment in regard to having low turnover. She said she can count “on one hand, easily,” the number of people who’ve resigned over that last 18 months or so at Rockfish.

Malone also expressed, though, a higher level of confidence that Rockfish’s retention rate will remain solid.

“No. 1, we have a good work environment here,” Malone said. “It’s hard to find what we have elsewhere.

“No. 2, where are they going to go?”

The Bottom Line
For now, most businesses don’t have to worry about losing key employees. Human resources managers, instead, are able to narrow searches for new employees to the most attractive candidates possible, while also knowing they’re likely to retain those hired for the foreseeable future.

With 15.4 million Americans unemployed, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest release, a number up markedly from the 7.5 million who were jobless in December 2007, human resources managers might just be some of the most job-secure workers in the country.

Their problems, rather than trying to find work, are more about cherry-picking from an increasingly eye-pleasing crop of would-be workers.

“You hate to say that, but it is good for us right now,” Arbuthnot said. “It’s a good problem to have, but we don’t need people to be out of work, either.”