DEM Recruitment Tools

Quick Links

DEM Recruitment Toolkit
DEM Recruitment Checklist
DEM Recruitment Resources

Gather Required Recruitment Details

Required Recruitment Information

This information is collected in the Recruitment Form and submitted by DEM HR to the Office of Human Resources for approval to initiate a recruitment process.

  1. Identify if this is an internal DEM recruitment, internal UW recruitment, or standard recruitment.
  2. Consider important details necessary for posting, such as: job posting timeline, application close date, position start date and the posted salary range.
  3. Consider supervisory information (ie. the roles supervision of full time or student team members).
  4. Select a Standard Job Description and establish duty percentages as well as tasks (if applicable).

Tips

  • Consider mapping out the full recruitment timeline with the ideal start date in mind to identify the needed application timeline.
  • The posted salary range will determine the maximum salary that could be offered during negotiations. While DEM encourages posting a likely and realistic salary range to provide transparency for applicants to make decisions, it is also important to maintain some ability to negotiate within the posted maximum. Consult with DEM HR for any questions around the posted salary range.
  • Tasks can be utilized within the Standard Job Description to share more specific duties associated with the role. Note: Some units within DEM utilize tasks more heavily than others.

Prepare Qualifications & Eligibility

Qualifiers and Qualifications

You’ll need to consider a variety of qualifier information as well as both preferred & required qualifications which will appear on the job posting.

  1. Consider qualifiers such as: salary, degree, work modality, and drivers license requirements.
  2. Consider required documents in the application. DEM recommends considering prompting applicants to address specific questions in  their cover letter to support initial review.
  3. Identify any preferred & required qualifications, utilizing a KSA-based approach. It is expected all DEM recruitments will utilize KSA’s to define required & preferred qualifications. 

DEM’s KSA-based Approach

DEM seeks to leverage a Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSA) approach to recruit and evaluate candidates during the recruitment process. By utilizing KSA-based qualifications, DEM recruitment committees can be more efficient in identifying the best possible talent across all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.

Establish Recruitment Efforts Plan

Recruitment Efforts Plan Requirements

The recruitment efforts plan requires the documentation of 3 distinct recruitment strategies that will aid in the successful recruitment of talented applicants across a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and identities. Specific areas of focus include:

  • Efforts to recruit talented perspectives and experiences outside of Wisconsin.
  • Efforts to recruit talent from across underrepresented populations to the role, such as disability status, gender identity, etc.
  • Efforts to recruit across a variety of experiences and backgrounds.

Tips

  • Consider potentially relevant professional associations, conferences, or workshops to recruit new perspectives to the role.
  • Consider ways to connect with community-based organizations to share of the opportunity within their communities. If reaching out to community-based organizations, it can also be a good opportunity to consider inviting a representative to serve on the recruitment committee.
  • The Job Summary provides a unique opportunity to speak to your teams values and mission-aligned work. Consider what information related to the role could be shared in order to help possible applicants connect their experiences to the role.
  • When creating a job summary, we encourage being creative and authentic to speak to relevant details specific to the role that may not be otherwise explicate within the job duties. when creating a job summary.

Recruitment Committee Kickoff Meeting

Tips

  • Include the Hiring Manager in the Kickoff Meeting so they can help share with the Recruitment Committee what they are looking for in a successful candidate.
  • Try to schedule the Kickoff Meeting to occur prior to the position closing so your Recruitment Committee can best assist in recruitment strategies. Don’t forget to coordinate a time with your DEM HR Representative.
  • Reference the recruitment strategies that the Hiring Manager outlined in the Position Review & Request Form so the Committee is aware.
  • Ensure everyone involved in the recruitment process is aware of their role. Reference the defined roles of a DEM Recruitment Committee.
  • Prior to the meeting, working with the Hiring Manager to clearly define the charge of the committee. We recommend documenting the following items to be reviewed during the kickoff meeting and for reference by the Recruitment Committee:
    • Job Summary
    • Brief Background of the Role
    • Defined Committee Purpose (be specific – ex. Identify 2-4 finalists and provide an unranked list of strengths/areas of concern to the Hiring Manager)
    • Recruitment Timeline
    • Any Candidate Considerations (what the Hiring Manager is looking for)
  • This can be a good space to confirm future availability for Recruitment Committee meetings and plan for next steps including the creation of search criteria, developing of interview questions, and planning for interviews.

Establish Recruitment Criteria & Benchmarks

Recruitment Criteria

Recruitment criteria is an all-encompassing term for knowledge, skills, and abilities to support screening, developing interview questions, and building talent pools. Recruitment criteria help you select the right talent for the position. 

  1. The Recruitment Chair should select the method for documenting recruitment criteria. Remember, this is documentation DEM HR will need at the completion of the Recruitment.  
  2. The Recruitment Chair should consider the charge set forward by the Hiring Manager and engage the Recruitment Committee when setting specific recruitment criteria.  
  3. The Recruitment Chair should solidify the initial recruitment criteria and must share with DEM HR prior to applications being released for review.
  4. Ensure that the criteria used in evaluating application materials align with the qualifications listed in the PVL. 
  5. Consult with your DEM HR representative if you have any questions on how to document or select recruitment criteria.  

Tips

  • DEM recommends utilizing 3-5 total criteria. The goal of the initial screen is to screen people in, not to screen people out.  
  • To ensure more inclusive criteria, you should actively involve diverse collaborators, such as people with different backgrounds, experiences, job roles, and personal identities in the creation of your criteria and throughout the recruitment process.  
  • Provide clear definitions and directions for the interpretation of each criteria. Clear criteria ensure the Recruitment Committee can evaluate and screen for the experiences and qualifications you are seeking. The clearer the criteria, the greater the likelihood that a larger pool of applicants will be successful in the recruitment process.  
  • When developing criteria for a position, consider the following questions: 
    • What is necessary for a person to be successful in this role, the first day on the job? 
    • What do the minimum requirements for the job look like in practice? 
    • What knowledge, skills, abilities may be necessary for the position but could be learned over time on the job?

Interview Question Library

The DEM Interview Question Library is intended to serve as a reference point when developing interview questions as a part of your interview planning. Questions are collected and updated from recent DEM recruitments. This is only a tool and you can choose to create questions outside of this library. For additional resources in preparation for an interview, reference UW–Madison’s Interview Guide.

|

  • What about this position is most exciting to you? What aspects are less appealing?
  • Based on what you know about the job and your skill set, what excites you about the job and what challenges do you anticipate?  How do you envision addressing these challenges?

  • This position will supervise 6 full-time professional staff members. Drawing on your past leadership experience, describe your leadership philosophy and how you’ll apply that philosophy as a supervisor of professional staff.
  • Please describe a time when you were able to lead a group of individuals over whom you had no direct authority to a successful result, such as the completion of a task or project.  Highlight the challenges you faced and how you managed them, as well as the lessons learned.
  • Tell us about a circumstance in which you held a team accountable or played a leadership role in achieving a specific deliverable. What challenges did you face? What lessons did you learn?
  • What would your general approach to staff development be, especially as it relates to capitalizing on individual staff needs, skills and abilities?
  • Imagine that you are leading a team of functional subject matter experts. They are fixed on a solution before requirements have been created. How do you remain objective and steer this team to focus on determining requirements?
  • Have you been a member of a team that had difficulty accomplishing its goal(s)? If so, looking back, what could you have done differently?
  • Describe a situation where you reached out to individuals or groups within your project or organization to build alliances to achieve a larger goal. How did you build those alliances? Were you able to achieve a goal you otherwise would not have been able to?
  • Tell us about your experience planning and running meetings. For example, how do you manage a situation where the meeting is getting off track? How do you make sure everyone has shared their opinion?
  • How would you explain a policy or decision to your team that you may not agree with, yet must implement?
  • Describe a situation when you initiated a change that would affect many people. How did you involve those who would be affected by the change.
  • In a supervisory or lead worker role, have you ever had to coach or counsel an employee who was not meeting expectations? What was the nature of the situation? What steps did you take? How did you prepare yourself?

  • This position will be responsible for interpretation and enforcement of various policies which UW–Madison do not directly author, including Big 10 and NCAA athletic eligibility policies and FERPA. What steps would you take to understand high-stakes policies? Can you share an experience where you had to navigate, interpret, and communicate policies that impacted numerous parties?
  • Share with us a situation in which you were able to find a new or better way of doing something significant in a professional setting. How did you deal with any pushback from colleagues, a supervisor, or customers of your efforts?
  • In complex work, especially involving data and data systems, there is always room for process improvement. Describe a time when you identified such an area. What was the problem, how did the solution improve things, and how did you work with others to bring about change?
  • Can you give us an example of how you managed a situation when you spent time trying something and then discovered it wouldn’t work?
  • Campus response to COVID-19 created a lot of disruption in usual procedures and routines. Describe for us how you respond to uncertainty and ambiguity.
  • Tell us about a career achievement you are particularly proud of? What did it take to make that achievement happen, and why is it meaningful to you?
  • Enrollment at a large, decentralized, institution like UW–Madison is incredibly complex. Can you share the specific experiences in your current or previous roles that will help you approach learning this key area of responsibility and describe how they will prepare you?
  • What is your experience with implementing good change management?
  • Tell us about a time you had to work with conflicting, delayed, or ambiguous information. How did you manage the situation?
  • In this role, you will need to coordinate and correspond with different stakeholders across the office and around campus. Please provide an example of when you had to coordinate and pull information together from multiple sources to accomplish a task.
  • Tell us about your experience and comfort with learning a new system, technology, or tool. Using a recent example, share with us your approach to learning this skill.
  • This position is housed within the student services area of the Office of the Registrar, however there will be times this position works across the office and around campus. Can you share about a time where you had to work collaboratively towards a shared goal?
  • Share with us a situation in which you were able to find a new or better way of doing something significant in a professional setting.
  • Tell us about a situation in which you have had to adjust to changes that were outside of your control. How did you oversee it?
  • Being on the frontlines of our office, the conversations with students and families can sometimes be difficult. Please share a time when you had to have a difficult conversation and how you navigated that situation.
  • Describe a time when you were able to effectively communicate with a difficult or unpleasant idea to staff, stakeholders, or senior management. What was the situation? What was the outcome?
  • Sometimes it’s important to disagree with others-including people who hold considerable influence. Tell us about a time when you were able to disagree with a supervisor or some other “person of influence,” and how you were able to maintain a positive relationship regardless of the disagreement.
  • Tell us how you have encouraged and supported continuous professional development in your staff. What have you done? How did you secure and utilize necessary resources? What was the end result?
  • Tell me about a time when you were involved in a new initiative that was met with some resistance from internal or external partners. How did you handle the situation, and what was the outcome?

  • Describe a time when you had to analyze a set of data and then make a recommendation. How did you clean or summarize the data?
  • Have you had experience working with a student information system? If so, what was it and what did you like about it? If not, what is a piece of software you have used in your professional career, what is its purpose and what did you like about it?
  • Please tell us about your experience creating training documentation? How did you ensure the training is meeting the needs to your end users?

  • As new PeopleSoft upgrades are delivered quarterly now, how would you go about developing a testing strategy to be implemented office-wide, including development of procedures, templates, and documentation?
  • What have you done to improve the Campus Solutions application experience, for both the technical team and the functional users?
  • You are tasked with implementing a workflow and functional testing automation process in the Office of the Registrar. How would you approach this assignment? Who would need to be involved?
  • Have you had to create and administer batch processes in an enterprise-level system? If so, please provide an example and describe your knowledge of these processes.
  • Our work includes a wide variety of tasks depending on the time of year. Some work will engage with the public while other work is repetitive, detail-oriented, and done individually (often remotely). During application review season (October to March), Admissions Counselors spend 24 hours or more each week reviewing applications, with more independent work. Please share with us a project you worked on that was repetitive in nature, detailed, or required hours of independent work. Describe the project and share how you motivated yourself to complete the task.
  • Recruiting work often involves speaking in public in front of strangers. Please share your comfort level with speaking in front of groups and meeting new people. How do you prepare for and approach these interactions?
  • Reflecting on your own educational journey, what advice would you give students going through the college application process?
  • This job requires the ability and willingness to travel locally and regionally, and work evening and weekend hours during peak times. How comfortable are you with coordinating work travel and managing a more flexible, 40-hour work schedule?
  • How do you see this position playing a role in the academic life cycle of a student?
  • How might you be a fierce advocate for the student employees while also navigating the priorities of other office colleagues and the students and families the office is serving?
  • A parent calls you upset that their child only received $2,000 in scholarship from the College of Engineering even though they were offered larger scholarships from other Universities. How would you respond to this parent?
  • Have you ever assisted in guiding another person’s research? What were some challenges and how did you overcome those challenges?
  • How would you respond if a legislator asked you to review a proposed change to the residency law, and you saw that the proposed change was based on a misinterpretation of the current law?
  • When confronted with a complicated issue with no clear correct answer, how do you choose between applying a policy and making an exception? Please give a specific example for each type of response and explain how you reached your conclusions.
  • Do you have experience coordinating and booking travel on behalf of someone else? Please include any relevant information on reimbursements.
  • A former UW–Madison alum who is a generous donor to the Wisconsin School of Business calls upset about their child being denied admission. The parent would like to speak to the Vice Provost. How do you proceed?
  • Tell us about a time where it was difficult to create a coherent visualization and narrative of a data set and how you overcame this obstacle.
  • We use technology to perform all aspects of this job.  Describe the top 3 technical skills, tools and systems you have the most experience with that make you a good candidate for this position. Also, please describe how you adapt to new technology.
  • Have you ever worked with confidential information? How did you ensure that the information was protected?

  • How do you handle conflicting priorities or multiple projects with competing deadlines? How do you prioritize your work and tasks? Please give specific examples.
  • Tell us about a time when you had too much work and not enough time to do it all. What got done, what didn’t, and why?
  • The RO often finds itself battling against competing priorities when working with campus partners. Describe how you have managed a situation in which you have competing requests with limited resource availability in a previous role.
  • How would you approach learning the systems that support enrollment and residency while supporting your staff as subject matter experts in managing* business processes?
  • A goal of Student Services and the Office of the Registrar is to provide excellent customer service to students and their families, as well as campus partners. At times, it can be difficult to balance meeting customer support needs and keeping current with the internal processing needs. How would you balance the demands of providing excellent front line customer service with keeping up with other day-to-day responsibilities?

  • If we were to ask your co-workers about you, what three words would they use to describe you?  Would those descriptors change if we asked your supervisor?
  • If selected for this position, please describe how you would go about meeting and developing work relations with campus stakeholders both internal and external to the Office of the Registrar.  How do you build and sustain relationships beyond the initial meet-and-greet?
  • What type of environment do you thrive in?
  • What do you think you would bring to this position that other candidates might not?
  • What do you think is your greatest area for professional improvement?
  • Student staff management and supervision is an important part of this role. How would your colleagues or former supervisees describe your supervision style?
  • Describe how you have handled a situation when you did something you regretted or made a mistake. How did you resolve it and what did you learn?
  • Describe a circumstance from a past job in which you had to interact with a hostile individual (preferably a customer or client). What was your approach for managing that situation?
  • You are working on an important project, but you come to a standstill due to a lack of information. Unfortunately, the Vice Provost is in a meeting for the rest of the day. What do you do next?
  • As part of this role its important to communicate the same idea to both internal colleagues and external campus partners.  What approach might you take to ensure consistent messaging to a variety of audiences?
  • What is something you are passionate about advocating for?
  • What qualities do you think makes a team successful? Can you provide an example of how you embraced those qualities in previous roles?

  • What do you expect from your co-workers and your work environment? What do you expect from your supervisor? What do you expect from the organization’s leadership?
  • What about this position will challenge you most and why?
  • What is your ideal work environment and how do you contribute to it?
  • Please describe the ideal working relationship with your supervisor and your ideal working relationship with those that report to you.

Submit Required Documentation

This information is required at the completion of the recruitment process and should be submitted to your DEM HR Representative or HR Administrator (OAR Only). We recommend compiling and saving this information throughout the process so that it is easier to share once there is an accepted offer. If you have any questions about what should be included for documentation, please consult with your DEM HR Representative.

  • List of search committee members and who served as chair
  • Where position was advertised (this includes listservs, emails, etc)
  • Assessment and Screening Criteria document
  • Templates of emails/letters sent to applicants (this would include invites for phone and/or in person interviews if done outside of the applicant tracking system)
  • Summary document of reviewed candidates.  Sample attached.
  • List of who was interviewed at each stage and a copy of the interview questions used for each stage of the process
  • Summary document of interviews and why candidate was or was not moved forward