Fifteen work days until winter break

[rolanni]

. . .not that I'm counting.

Took pictures of Application Mountain, there at the day-job. My, that's some stack of file boxes. It may be that the worst of the data entry is over. I'd cross my fingers if they'd bend that far, but since they don't, somebody out there please do it for me. There are still two searches yet to reach their deadlines, but they are by their nature "small" searches -- maybe another 50 applications to input and file between them -- so that's all good.

Next step, after the various committees have done their work: threading the logistics of bringing (counts on fingers) nine-to-fifteen job applicants to campus and setting them up with individual faculty meetings, official dinners and the means to deliver presentations (aka "job talks"). So much for there being no work to do in January.

Having dropped the Hexacat off at the vet's office on my way in to work, I met Steve there on the way home, and we both heard the results of the tests, which is. . .

Kidney failure.

. . .which isn't as dire as it sounds, what with that "failure" thing in there. The vet did admit that, "if he was a person," Hex would be in line for a kidney transplant, but, as it is, we have some meds to give him, and we need to find more ways to bring liquid into his life, which means Hexapuma discovering the joys of wet food. Maybe even wet food with a tiny dash of salt. This will be Puma's Extra Treat, so he'll also be able to hold his Certified Specialness over Mozart and Scrabble, which will cork them off no end.

I make that win-win-win, in the Coon Cat Official Scoring System(tm)

I fear there will be no work on George this evening; there are dishes to wash and I'm kinda washed out my own self. Early to bed -- that's the ticket.

And, yeah, early to rise.

Everybody have a good evening.

Comments

[eseme]

Best wishes for the kitty.

And seriously, has the day job heard of online applications? The applicants should be doing all that data entry themselves. I know I did at most places I've applied to, and was always baffled at the ones that still wanted paper.

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

Yes to online apps. Any way someone would take that suggestion? I was on a Search Committee here last year and all info was entered by applicant on-line with attachments. It certainly saved the poor folks in HR a lot of work.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

The new dean is going to force email applications starting next round. Forms on the web would be super, but! The first thing our college historically cuts, when the president needs a little extra spending money, is the IT department, and apparently programming forms is Hard.

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

We teach the skill to second semester Web Design students. This is a community college and these are art/design students we are talking about. It isn't that hard, just nit-picky.

[eseme]

I beg to differ. Designing web forms is not too bad.

Designing the database that the data is stored in is harder. Making the website talk to the database and deposit the right data in the right places, and ensuring that some jerk can't utterly kill your database by putting programming code into the form is also hard. Making sure that the data can be pulled out by programs like Word so that form rejection letters can be sent with the applicant's name and address filled in in the right place is harder still.

Or, you can pay an outside company to do it. Having applied for jobs at colleges, I ran into what was clearly the same software system, with a really similar look, at a few different colleges or universities.

Of course, if one is cutting one's own IT budget, there is probably not money to pay an outside firm to set it up and also provide ongoing tech support.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

The day-job is going to force electronic applications, starting next fiscal year. By "electronic applications" they mean -- applicants will email their materials. There will stil be data entry involved so that rejection letters can go out and the EEO data can be tracked.

I'm administering a search at the moment that is accepting both electronic and paper apps -- this means that I have to scan the paper apps into electronic format, sort them all into electronic folders, and hang them on the server for the committee to access. This is said to be "easier".

. . .I'm not seeing it, myself. . .

[eseme]

I would image, from the viewpoint of those that work at a college, the best system is the one with a login and entirely online forms.

I typically had to fill out the application form (name, address, EEO info, complete education and job history). This information was, for the most part, also still in my resume, but they needed me to put it in the form, to it would be in their database. I then also had to upload a copy of my resume and cover letter (typically in .doc or .pdf, but some places wanted .rtf) to their server, which presumably went into some shared folder that the search committee could log into and access. There was often a naming convention that they wanted (though my personal LastnameResume generally is acceptable).

Places that had such a system did not want paper.

Now, as I noted above, there is a cost to such a system. But I would imagine the cost is well worth it, even for institutions of higher learning who are cutting their budgets.