Hiring

If a department would like to add a new permanent position (full-time or part-time), or fill an established position, the request goes through a standardized process for all Provost Centers & Departments. Requests use a Smartsheet form to collect the required job information and manage approvals. 

Job Request Form  

The approval workflow includes your budget partner, PAA HR, and our compensation partner to ensure budget and job details are accurate.  

• During this process changes may be made to your job details to align with university guidelines for job profiles, minimum candidate qualifications, or other criteria. Your HR Partner will notify you of these changes before the job requisition is created. 

• Requests that represent incremental headcount (not backfills) are subject to additional approval. 

• If you need assistance before submitting your request, your HR Business Partner is the best resource. 

The Handbook section Creating and Posting a Job covers job posting requirements, differences between new and reclassified positions, and waiver of posting request. The Tip Sheet here provides checklists for information you will need to include for your Job Requisition and PIQ, as well as the steps you will need to take to complete the process. 

• Preparation is an important foundation to reduce opportunities for bias and ensure you are hiring the best candidate. 

• Outline your plan for assessing candidates. 

• What are the core competencies and functional skills needed? 

• How will we identify these when reviewing applicants?  

• What is flexible vs. a “must have?” 

• Who is our hiring committee? Have we communicated expectations? 

• Identify interview questions and/or evaluation rubric. 

• Complete an intake meeting with your recruiter to discuss the plan and design the strategy/approach. 

• Create a realistic timeline for working together – resume reviews, screening time, interviews, etc. 

Passive Candidate Outreach: Do we believe direct applicants will meet the needs of the role? Diversity, specific subject matter expertise, etc. If not, proactive sourcing of candidate profiles may be required. Pull vs. push approach, actively seeking applicants vs. waiting for them to (maybe) apply. 

The university’s minimum posting requirement is seven (7) days, with exceptions for roles covered under collective bargaining agreements which are posted according to the contract.  

Jobs are automatically posted on Penn Careers as well as: 

• LinkedIn 

• Indeed  

• Academic Careers  

• Asians in Higher Ed  

• Blacks in Higher Education  

• The Chronicle of Higher Education  

• Disabled in Higher Ed  

• Diverse Jobs  

• Higher Ed Jobs  

• Hispanics in Higher Ed  

• Inside Higher Ed Jobs  

• LGBT in Higher Ed  

• Native Americans in Higher Ed   

• The HBCU Career Center  

• Veterans in Higher Ed  

• WomenAndHigherEd.com

Other sites can be used for cost; please work with your recruiter to request additional advertising.  

• Do not post jobs directly on other sites as the university has a partner for this work to help with compliance/reporting requirements.  

• However, sharing on LinkedIn and to unique groups or listservs is strongly encouraged! 

Candidate Review 

Your recruiter will screen applicants against minimum qualifications for the role along with the preferred qualifications discussed in the intake meeting.  

• The goal is to provide hiring managers with a viable slate of qualified candidates to review, not to share every applicant. 

• Recruiters will also share the overall diversity of the candidates for review and resumes will be redacted to exclude candidates’ identifying information. 

• This includes dates of employment, graduation dates, and universities/colleges. This redaction is done to reduce the influence of implicit biases. 

Selecting for Next Steps 

Hiring managers may directly select candidates for next steps or choose to share with all or some members of the hiring committee. 

• It is the hiring manager’s responsibility to notify the recruiter of who is moving forward so Workday can remain accurate. 

Pause to Calibrate 

Early in the process is important for continued calibration between the recruiter and hiring manager. Providing feedback on candidate profiles (this profile looks great and why) helps everyone. 

Screening Interview 

Before inviting candidates for a full interview, we will first need to understand more about them.  

• An initial screening interview helps refine our understanding candidate by validating skills and behavior from a resume against the requirements and responsibilities of the job. 

• This is where we begin to collect evidence of whether the candidate will be set up for success in the role. 

• Ex. They state on their resume they have managed people, and this is important for your role as they will be managing a team of five. However, upon further discussion, the candidate shares they have only managed one person for several months.  

Phone/Zoom Interview – Typically 30 minutes with the hiring manager or another member of the hiring committee. 

• Focuses on capturing additional information about how a candidate’s experience, skills, and behaviors align to the expectations for the role.  

• Answers the question: Do we want to learn more about this candidate with the full hiring committee? 

SparkHire – University-approved tool to conduct recorded video interviews with a standard set of questions.  

• Please share a little bit about yourself and what interests you about this position.  

• What makes you a strong candidate for this position? What experiences, attributes, and/or knowledge do you have that will help you be successful in the role?  

• How do you manage your time and energy when you have multiple competing priorities and/or conflicting deadlines?  

• How has your experience and background prepared you to be effective in an environment that values inclusion and diversity? 

From here, you’ll select candidates to move to the next round of interviews… 

Interview Structures 

This is our opportunity to collect the most evidence of a candidate’s ability to be successful at Penn.  

Panel – This is a one-to-many style interview where multiple people take turns asking questions of the candidate. Useful for working environments that rely heavily on team cooperation. 

• Should have a leader who is responsible for keeping the group on topic and on schedule.  

• Other interviewers observe and ask fact-finding and follow-up questions for clarification.  

• The leader develops questions for the group and assigns them to others based on their areas of expertise.  

• Leaders ensure each topic is explored completely with follow-up questions, fact-finding, and examples. 

1:1 – One candidate, one interviewer. Gives both participants an opportunity to go deep into discussing 2-4 specific behaviors and/or functional skills.  

Remember to document interview feedback and/or use a rubric or matrix! You can find these on the Talent Acquistion forms page here.  

Interviewing Techniques 

Behavioral - Behavioral interview questions focus on a candidate's past experiences, behaviors, knowledge, skills and abilities by asking the candidate to provide specific examples of when they have demonstrated certain behaviors or skills as a means of predicting their future behavior and performance. 

• A complete response to a behavioral-based question has three parts:  

• The situation – the candidate’s description of the circumstances they faced 

• The behavior/action - what the candidate did to directly address the particular situation. 

• The result –the outcome of the candidate’s action 

Functional – These interview questions focus on candidates' specific functional skills, those that are required for the role. This could be project management, financial accounting, etc.  

Audition – A type of functional interview, an audition interview can be useful because it demonstrates a candidate’s abilities through interactive means.  

• For some positions, such as computer programmers or training specialists, you may wish to observe candidates in action before making a hiring decision.  

• For this reason, you might consider taking candidates through a simulation or brief exercise to evaluate their skills.  

• Such simulations and exercises should be an accurate reflection of the working environment and be reviewed with your HR Partner before using. 

Remember, candidates are interviewing us just as much as we are interviewing them. They will translate their experience in the recruiting process to what they can expect as an employee.  

Timely communication 

• Reviewing resumes within one week of receiving them from recruiting. 

• Informing candidates as soon as you have information for them – don’t keep them guessing. 

• It is the responsibility of the Hiring Manager to personally contact candidates who were interviewed (by phone, video or face-to-face) but will no longer be considered for the role. 

• You can find communication templates for that here.   

Preparation  

• Develop questions beforehand to maintain consistency across interviews and allow for easier evaluation of the candidates. This also means we will not have multiple interviewers asking the same question(s). 

• Knowing what behavioral and functional skills you need to assess with also save time having to add additional interviews because we missed collecting key evidence.  

• If you choose to conduct a panel interview, inform the candidate of the interview format beforehand. And limit the panel to three or four people to avoid intimidation. 

Accommodation Requests 

• If a request is made, please reach out to your recruiter and we will work with the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs (OAAEAP) to manage. 

• If a candidate shares details of their situation, let them know your recruiter can connect them with OAAEAP so they can ask detailed questions. DO NOT ask follow-up questions, promise anything specific, or continue the conversation. It is best to redirect back to the interview topic. 

The hiring manager should review all substantiated feedback and evidence to support the candidate’s success in the role. Identify risks and qualify if they will limit ability to be successful or can be learned on the job/coached. Debrief with hiring committee on finalist selection(s). Identify finalist and notify recruiter who will help initiate next steps. 

Reference Checks 

Before an offer can be extended, the University requires reference checks be completed. These can be accomplished one of two ways: 

• SkillSurvey – University-preferred tool that asks candidates to provide reference contact information, references answer an extensive survey (based on job profile), and hiring manager receive a report.  

• Manually – If hiring managers would prefer to contact references directly, they manage this process end-to-end providing TA with the documented references. You can find a form for documenting manual references on the Talent Acquistion forms page here. 

References are also required for internal transfers. The minimum expectation that the hiring manager have a discussion with the transferring employee's current manager. 

Compensation Requests 

Offer amounts are requested through a Smartsheet form. They are reviewed against the requirements for the role, the candidate's background and experience as they related to the role, hiring manager justification for offer, internal equity, external market data, along with other relevant factors.   

Once the verbal offer has been approved, the hiring manager extends this to the candidate and provides the outcome to their recruiter. If accepted, the outcome includes an agreed upon start date. Start dates should be a minimum of 10 days from the verbal offer accept to provide adequate time for the background check to complete  

Following the verbal accept, TA processes the offer in WorkDay. This step provides the new hire their official offer documents in WorkDay and gets the hiring process started.  

• Candidate receives document and electronically acknowledges. 

• Once they have done that, the background check is initiated via our vendor HireRight. 

• Candidates receive an email directly from HireRight. 

• Your recruiter provides regular updates on progress. Should a background check not be complete prior to Friday before the new hire’s first day, we will need to adjust their start date. 

All staff, faculty, students, and volunteers who have direct contact with minors on a regular basis must undergo a series of background checks required by the State of Pennsylvania. This includes all staff running summer programs/camps involving interaction with minors. Please see the full Protecting Minors on Campus Policy. 

Once the background check is finalized, the new hire will receive information on completing new hire paperwork with Onboard@Penn along with instructions for setting up their PennKey. Once the worker has set up their PennKey and password, they will receive an email from Workday with instructions on how to log into Workday and view their Onboarding tasks. It may take up to two hours for the worker to be able to log into Workday after setting up their PennKey. The new hire should complete their onboarding tasks in Workday before visiting Onboard@Penn.   

All Provost Centers use Onboard@Penn to provide consistent, efficient, and friendly first-day services for new hires.  Onboard@Penn provides details on new hire paperwork (W-4, I-9, etc.) and other onboarding processes.  

Onboarding is a concurrent not consecutive process! While the hiring processes are underway, stay connected with your new employee.  

• Provide the first day details; discuss their schedule and any upcoming meetings or events they can expect to attend once they join. 

• Plan their onboarding schedule; identify a buddy within the department.  

• Ensure workspace and IT equipment are prepared in advance.  

• Schedule regular check-ins.