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The City of Pittsfield, Massachusetts is the cultural, commercial, legal, and medical center of the Berkshires region. The city, which is located approximately 140 miles west of Boston, is home to around 44,000 people. The City of Pittsfield employs 500 people and the municipal government’s 32 departments hire between 15 and 20 new employees per year. Reinventing a Paper-Based Hiring ProcessIn municipalities nationwide, budget pressures are a day-to-day reality. As a result, it’s not surprising that many cities and towns still use paper-based recruiting and hiring processes. Until recently, that was the case in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The city in the western part of the state relied on its Personnel Technician, Michael Taylor, to post jobs online or in newspapers and to receive paper applications for positions ranging from entry level jobs to senior leadership positions. |
“Using paper prolonged the hiring process,” said Taylor. “The hiring managers were dependent on the Personnel Department to send them resumes and scheduling interviews often took longer than we liked.”
Rather than continuing with the status quo, the City decided to investigate online applicant tracking systems which would digitize and automate the hiring process from start to finish. The Personnel team looked at several different solutions, but they felt that Hyrell was the best fit for their needs. “We liked Hyrell for several reasons,” said Taylor. “It was user friendly, so we felt confident that our hiring managers would be able to quickly learn how to use the system. In addition, the price was right for municipalities.”
All the participants in Pittsfield’s hiring process have seen benefits from using Hyrell:
The Personnel Department
The Personnel Department has seen greater exposure for jobs, since Hyrell automatically posts positions to job boards. In addition, hiring managers make far fewer calls to Personnel because they have more control over the hiring process. Taylor has taken advantage of the extensive list of pre-written interview questions available in Hyrell’s Community Library for use with both internal and external candidates.
Hiring Managers
“Hiring managers no longer have to wait for Personnel to send them resumes – they can see promising applicants immediately in Hyrell,” said Taylor. Hyrell also enables hiring managers to communicate electronically with candidates and schedule interviews. This is convenient both for the managers and for the candidates. With the Stages functionality, hiring managers can easily track where candidates are at different stages of the hiring process.
Candidates
Applicants are notified immediately that their application has been received and they are updated each step of the way via e-mail or text alerts. Once promising applicants are identified, the City of Pittsfield uses Hyrell to initiate background checks. This generates faster results than traditional background checking methods.
