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Large District
San Diego City Schools, California
 
Situation
Located in sunny southern California, San Diego City Schools is a rapidly growing school system. As the district's Deputy Administrative Officer for Human Resources, Deberie Gomez says, "People want to live in San Diego." So in her role leading the recruitment and hiring of teachers and other personnel for the country's 17th largest school district, she is faced with many challenges. Until March 2001, the district had an application process that was entirely paper-based and, as Gomez says, "incredibly labor intensive." In that process, staff members felt the best applicants weren't always rising to the top of the pile. Finally, Gomez believed that all applicants deserved to have their applications acknowledged, but that task was becoming unmanageable with the large number of candidates applying to the district. Gomez knew there had to be a better way and when she learned about SearchSoft Solutions' Applicant Tracking System, she knew she had found a way to make managing the application process more efficient and effective.
 
Solution
In March 2001, using SearchSoft's Applicant Tracking System, San Diego City Schools converted its paper-based application process to a fully online system. Immediately, Gomez and her staff were able to manage the large number of applications coming into the district with ease and efficiency.
 
Developed specifically to meet the unique personnel needs of K-12 schools, SearchSoft’s Applicant Tracking System allows principals, personnel directors and other authorized administrators to collect, track, search and retrieve job applications online quickly and easily so they can focus their energy on interviewing and hiring high quality school personnel. The Applicant Tracking System also offers qualified teachers and other school personnel an easy way to submit their application materials online.
 
Education customers can purchase the SearchSoft Applicant Tracking System in either an Installed or Application Service Provider (subscription) model. San Diego City Schools purchased the SearchSoft Installed model, buying the software and installing it on servers at the district.
 
As SearchSoft's first large school district deployment, Gomez and her team at San Diego City Schools worked closely with the company to ensure that the Applicant Tracking System included the features needed to manage the large number of applications that they receive. Gomez says that the school district and SearchSoft worked in a partnership, resulting in product enhancements that make the system work efficiently for San Diego and other large school districts nationwide. "We had lots of back and forth," she says, "And SearchSoft was incredibly responsive."
 
Gomez also knew that the implementation and training process was going to be critical to SearchSoft's success at San Diego City Schools. Recently, the district purchased additional user licenses for principals and began a training program to teach them how to take advantage of the Applicant Tracking System's features. Gomez says they are teaching principals to use SearchSoft to search and evaluate applicants, but her long range goal is for Human Resources to hand over the entire selection process to principals.
 
"SearchSoft will allow principals to screen and qualify applicants as well as check their credentials," she says. "We have applicants put all of their materials -- resumes, credentials -- online."
 
Results
It has been nearly two years since San Diego City Schools went 100 percent paperless with its application process. Still, occasionally the district hears from an applicant who doesn't have access to a computer. However, Gomez says the district has an expectation that its employees are tech savvy. "If an applicant says 'what do you mean I have to apply online?' we know that person doesn't meet the needs of our district," she says. While Human Resources staff often suggests to applicants that they can access SearchSoft from computers in community locations, such as public libraries, the department also has six computer kiosks in its offices that are available for candidates to use.
 
The district also decided to use SearchSoft for its annual "post and bid" transfer process that happens three times per year. Gomez says that taking the annual transfer program online simplified a process that was previously very labor intense. The district created a short application for teachers wanting to transfer to one of the 184 schools within the district. The Human Resources staff was able to use the system information to match applicants with open positions.
 
Since installing SearchSoft's ATS, San Diego City Schools has received more than 51,000 external applications and 10,000 transfer applications created, logging over 140,000 unique expressions of interest to nearly 4,000 unique job postings. Since its initial implementation, the district has expanded its use of the system from teacher applicants to site-level administrators, such as principals and assistant principals, with the ultimate goal of using SearchSoft for the rest of management and classified personnel as well. "SearchSoft is perfect for the incredible number of applications that our district sees on an ongoing basis," she concludes.