questions by Camille Perlman
Communication, appreciation, and commitment to follow each step of the process: These are all components that form a successful relationship between student affairs and human resources. They take time, understanding, and patience, which many departments have run low on due to high staff turnover and the pandemic. However, the sources here agree that it’s time to get back to building a better relationship and working together toward improving hiring practices and professional development opportunities for staff.
Participating in this conversation are Stephanie Carter, director of residence life at Wake Forest University; Caitlin Burchette, director of compensation at Wake Forest University; Aja Holmes, assistant dean of students and director of community living at the University of San Francisco; and Brittany McDaniel, associate director of residential education at Washington University in St. Louis.
What are the biggest challenges between student affairs and human resources (HR) on your campus? Is it writing job descriptions? The interview process? The timelines?
Stephanie Carter: The only way I can answer this question is to provide some historical context (since my start in 2017) to show where I have seen us come from to where we are today. As a function of my role, especially within the first few years after being hired, I had the opportunity to work directly with human resources on some of our search processes. Here is my quick disclaimer: I fully believe that what I consider a challenge may not be universally seen as a challenge to others, but since you asked me the question here is my answer. I found myself wanting some clearly defined roles and responsibilities from HR on our search processes or the things we could or couldn’t do in this realm. I realized pretty quickly that the structure I desired wasn’t necessarily in place. After talking to other colleagues in different departments, I realized that everyone seemed to be handling aspects of the recruitment, interviewing, and hiring process differently. There were no uniform standards or guidelines to follow. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy the beauty that comes with no apparent guardrails, but I also love when someone hands me a roadmap to follow but allows flexibility to tailor it as needed.
The challenges I felt at the time seemed to stem from a lack of structure or a universally shared set of expectations about several things, such as the process to update job descriptions or how many or what type of interviews were expected to happen before a candidate arrived on campus and once they did arrive. Some of this confusion was felt before, but during my first or second year here there were several major staffing changes within the HR unit. The director and several other key staff left the university, and interim measures were soon put in place to keep business going. As you can imagine, this took quite the toll as they needed time to sufficiently rebuild their team and get the essential processes up and running again. Fast forward, and these challenges were only exacerbated by COVID-19. Remote work and flex schedules provided staff with some much needed flexibility but also brought into play a new struggle: the ability or inability to have a true face-to-face conversation with some staff as work schedules (even after the height of the pandemic) remained remote or with very distinct in-person hours. This struggle has been mentioned by other hiring managers in our division, especially those with part-time employees who are often hired on a more frequent basis. When schedules don’t match up and hiring paperwork needs to be completed, it just leads to frustrations all around, as you can imagine.
The structure I and many others needed truly came into play when our division created a new unit to essentially bridge the gap between campus life and human resources.
Caitlin Burchette: In general, timelines can be a challenge specific to searches. I've always found schedule coordination to be a barrier. Keeping the search process as nimble as possible, setting timeline expectations, and being upfront with your key stakeholders can be a path to timely progress. The job market has cooled, but employers must be prepared to move forward with top candidates as soon as possible. Partnering with human resources up front to work through position descriptions, interview steps, expectations, and budget restrictions is the best approach to a timely search.
Aja Holmes: In general, its HR’s lack of understanding the work that we do: the live-on component, the overnight duty, and the crisis response that we are responsible for in housing and residence life. Those are some barriers that cause missed communication between the two offices, especially around compensation (free housing, meal plan options, etc.).
Brittany McDaniel: A significant number of student affairs staff have HR responsibilities as a part of their job, whether it’s managing student or full-time staff. However, sometimes it is easy to go into autopilot and manage certain components of the staff experience as though it was a process, versus centering the purpose and function of the role. When a vacancy occurs, particularly if it’s unanticipated, hiring managers may feel urgency in posting an outdated position description just to get it posted, rather than revising and tailoring it for their department and staffing needs. Similarly, for newly created positions, particularly roles like being a coordinator, they may feel compelled to post a generic position description without thoughtfully considering what they need the employee to do. This presents a challenge in how student affairs and HR work together because HR wants each position description to be reflective of the individual role so that the manager is better equipped to set up the newly hired employee for success and then hold them accountable. However, HR doesn’t always understand what makes one coordinator role different from another coordinator role, so communication is key.
Another challenge we experience is that hiring managers don’t always follow all steps in the HR recruitment and hiring process. If the hiring manager and HR are not in constant communication, then steps could be missed, which results in an inequitable hiring process for candidates applying to jobs across the division or institution.
Carter: Within the past six years, our division created a talent management unit to work in concert with HR on the recruitment, hiring, and retention of staff within our division (the unit does so much more, but these are some of the ways I most interact with them). We are not the only ones to create a similar unit, but I am definitely thankful for them. Creating our talent management unit has helped tremendously! They’ve helped because in the absence of a system or process, they created one for our division to use. Insert the structure (and flexibility) that I craved!
As a department, we work directly with our talent management unit for search chair training, updating job descriptions, handling salary requests, writing justifications for new positions, promoting staff, restructuring the department, and utilizing our talent management software (WorkDay). They in turn work directly with HR on our behalf because they can speak the language and can navigate both our worlds seamlessly. Over the past few years, they have formed (from my perspective) a great partnership and have truly turned into amazing advocates for our entire division. I think our colleagues in HR rely heavily on this relationship, and so do the rest of us.
Burchette: Connecting is the best approach to working through challenges. Context can be lost in email; a meeting or quick Zoom can often allow time to work through clarifying items to ensure that departments are on the same page. If you need an identified partner in HR, I recommend requesting one. As needs arise, a specific person or group to contact can make all the difference.
Holmes: I have invited HR over to our offices, given them a tour, treated them to lunch in the dining center, and shown them a staff office and staff apartment and living areas. That made a world of difference since all negotiation happens with HR staff and not at the office that is hiring. It made it much easier for HR to answer questions.
McDaniel: One way the two departments navigate these challenges is by centering the person and approaching conversations with openness and a desire to come to a shared resolution. Communication is key on both sides, so student affairs should articulate their vision for the staffing structure in their department and what qualities they are seeking in candidates. A market analysis should be conducted (if one hasn’t been in the last five years) exploring the scope of position, minimum and preferred requirements, and salary. HR should provide a clear understanding of what is and is not adaptable based on individual needs and should provide support in ensuring that searches, onboarding, and employee development are facilitated in fair, equitable, and intentional ways.
Carter: I wish HR understood that applicants today, more than ever, want to know an exact salary or a salary range before they even apply for a job. They want it listed plain and center on the job postings. Yet many institutions don’t want to or perhaps can’t share the information for some reason or another. Case in point: When I applied for my position, I actually called HR because there was no salary information posted, and I wanted some idea of the range, not even an exact number just the range. I was told they don’t share that information and that the pay would be commensurate with my experience if I was hired. Yes, I understood, but I also knew there had to be a range, there’s always a range, but I took the answer and said thank you.
One other thing, I wish that HR (but maybe this is more so for our colleagues who manage the university budget) recognized that salaries for staff in our field have consistently been low, and not much change or progress has been made on a large scale in this arena. The number of staff who have to work two and three jobs to make ends meet is probably more than we all can imagine. This only leads to quicker burnout, low morale, and many other things that make it harder to recruit and retain talented staff to actually do the work. It’s a vicious cycle that I truly want to see come to an end.
Burchette: I am not currently in student affairs, but I worked in the field for several years and certainly understand their essential functions. As a human resources professional, I also understand HR's essential functions. Whatever needs to be understood, communication is key. Partnerships, connections, and open communication are essential to understanding, even if there is only sometimes agreement. Focusing on what we can do together, as opposed to what we cannot do, is a good place to start. Keep a list of remaining items and continue incorporating them into your work as you progress. Ruthlessly prioritizing will help.
Holmes: I wish they understood that someone needs to be on campus to address the care and concern for students after hours and that there are staff who have that as part of their position. There is also a need for applicants to meet with several different groups and types of people on campus, since they are interviewing us just as much as we are interviewing them.
McDaniel: Student affairs often employs a large number of entry-level staff, many of whom have graduated with their bachelor’s or master’s degree within the last three to five years. Increasingly, these staff are entering their roles and viewing their positions as transient, something to do while they figure out what comes next for them professionally. More and more, young professionals (and even mid-level professionals) are considering leaving the field. In student affairs, we are so focused on the student experience and overcoming obstacles outside of our control that we’re not able to provide staff opportunities to develop skill sets outside of their daily roles, cultivate a sense of belonging to the larger institution, and explore new pathways within higher education that are outside of student affairs. This is where HR could better support us. What programs and development opportunities can you offer that specifically target student affairs entry- and mid-level staff to strengthen belonging and support the institutional retention of employees?
Carter: I have to imagine that hiring policies and procedures change at a rate that many outside of this world may not understand. Or perhaps there is adjacent legislation that can affect hiring changes and salaries – really, any number of pertinent functions, and if this isn’t your day-to-day life we could potentially get our institutions in trouble operating under an old set of policies or procedures because we didn’t know better. I would venture to say that those in HR probably also wish we understood that some of the key functions in the hiring process are out of their control. For example, conducting a background check or other measures are often out of their hands, and when there are delays it often frustrates them too.
Burchette: HR wants to partner with you to realize goals and progress. Partner, connect, keep open lines of communication, and share as much context as possible. The more context that human resources has, the more they can assist with the full picture. Oftentimes, opportunities and challenges are layered. Processes are only sometimes linear. Human resources can assist with the best approach when they know your plan.
Holmes: They wish we knew how to design job descriptions that are succinct, eye-catching, and brief enough to match the position that corporate America ascribes to. Those in student affairs need to understand that position expertise, skills, and abilities need to be defined in all of our positions. They also need to understand the importance of getting training on HR’s systems so they can help to track data and collect information, from the résumé and cover letter to the candidate feedback rating form.
McDaniel: It can be common for employees to see HR as the department that looms in the background of the institution. When people think of human resources, they may only consider hiring, onboarding, and offboarding support; however, there’s so much more to the world of human resources. HR staff are here to support and invest in the lifecycle of each employee. HR is not here to get in the way; they want to be present and supportive in improving the employee experience. When interacting with HR, student affairs staff should embrace a growth mindset and consider how they can work collaboratively to address issues and concerns or improve the experiences of employees in their area.
Camille Perlman is the managing editor of Talking Stick.
