Your AppliTrack system has been updated to allow your district vacancies to appear on your organization's Facebook page.  Follow the steps below to use the new feature:

1.  Go to the AppliTrack Facebook App at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=242302395816738

2.  Click Add to My Page which is found on the left side of the page

3.  Select the Facebook page on which you want your jobs to appear

4.  Go to the Facebook page that you selected

5. Click on the words Job Opportunites which can now be found on the left side of your page

6. Type the name of your district into the search box

7. Click Select

Now, applicants can apply directly to your vacancies through your Facebook page.  And, you can share vacancies with your Facebook friends and allow for your friends to do the same!

Questions?  Contact support@generalasp.com

Every week our Support Team releases incremental improvements, performance optimizations and bug fixes to the AppliTrack system.  One recent update brought in additional options for field types present in the custom application pages, and online forms: Date/Time field type, and formats for Textbox fields.  These new options give you more control over the type of information you collect and, ultimately, better consistency and quality of information in the system and a better experience for users. 

These new field types are documented in the Field type reference of the AppliTrack online documentation. Briefly, the Date/Time type modifies the screen to give a calendar and/or time selector when a field is entered - this is a fairly common way to quickly get a consistently-formatted input from users.   The new formats for the textbox ensure responses match an expected pattern such as: telephone number, email address, or numeric value.   Additional textbox formats can be created by contacting the Support Team.

Give these new options a try in your AppliTrack system today!

About 88%.  This is the average response rate when applicants are asked to voluntarily disclose their race and ethnicity in the employment application process.  When asked about gender, nearly 95% of applicants will provide some response.  Further, the response rate does not significantly change when applicants are required to provide some response (even when that response is "I choose to not respond").  These response rates are based on our analysis of an aggregate of over 2 million applicant files.

Settings for the EEO Form in the AppliTrack employment application can be modified by accessing the "Setup" tab, "Manage Application Pages", and then "edit" the "EEO Form". 

Looking deeper...

Collecting race, ethnicity, and gender information in the online application process is a standard practice with AppliTrack and a necessary part of many employers' applications.  It is also important to acknowledge that state and federal laws* prohibit the use of these responses in the selection process.  That is, you can collect information about protected classes but you must be able to demonstrate that this information is not used in selecting new employees.  Interestingly these rules do not preclude requiring a response, employers may permit applicants to make a "I choose to not respond" selection (the default setup of the EEO Form in AppliTrack does not require a response and allows "I choose not to respond"). 

Here's a breakdown of applicant response rate to the basic EEO Form, numbers represent the average response rate for each area:

 An example interpretation from the above - with employers not requiring some response, 3.76% of applicants provided no response to the question of their gender.

 * - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces Federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination - including policies and practices related to job advertisements, recruiting, applications, and hiring.  Part of the regular activities of the EEOC is the requirement that employers having more than 100 employees collect and periodically report information gender and race/ethnicity about their work force.  There is, however, no federal requirement for reporting on applicant data - only employment data.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) also plays a role in regulating the affirmative action and equal opportunity employment practices of employers that are considered federal contractors.  Even though many public school districts receive some form of federal funding, few, if any, provide goods or services to the federal government.  As such, most school districts are not subject to OFCCP regulations.  The OFCCP jurisdictional requirements provide a fairly straightforward description for of employers that are subject to OFCCP rules. 

Organizations that are subject to OFCCP regulations are required to report on applicant data through an adverse impact analysis. 

A few nice enhancements have been released into your AppliTrack system.

Interview Manager Cutoff Time
Now, you can assign a cutoff time to an interview slot so that applicants are unable to select an interview time less than one, two, three, etc. hours prior to the session start time.  For example, you may not want an applicant to choose an 8:00 AM interview time slot at 7:15 AM on that same day.  Now, you can ensure that you have ample time to prepare for any interviews that are scheduled by applicants.

Administrator Home Tab Message
AppliTrack SuperUsers may now create a custom message that is displayed to all district AppliTrack users.  For example, you may want to post a message to all administrators that says, "Reminder, all teacher evaluations are due March 1st!"  From the Home Tab, simply click "Edit Message" at the top of the screen where it says, "Welcome!"

If you have any questions about these new additions, please feel free to call us at 847-475-2283 x1 or e-mail us at support@generalasp.com.

Social Media Tools

Your applicants can now help you recruit!

A neat new feature has been added to AppliTrack that will allow your applicants to broadcast one of your vacancies to one of over 100 social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn - directly from your job posting page!  An applicant has always been able to e-mail a job posting to a friend and we believe this new functionality will allow your vacancies to leverage to massive audience of social media users.

We hope you see the benefit of these recruiting tools being made available to your applicants!

Administrator Questions Now Available!

As you know, the Interview Manager contains an Interview Questionnaire Builder that allows you to choose from over 1,300 questions appropriate for various K12 classified and certified positions.  This is a free feature in the AppliTrack Interview Manager.

Last night, we released the Administrator Interview Question library.  The new Administrator Interview Question Library helps organizations quickly create job specific interview questionnaires, by providing nearly 1,500 additional questions broken into 37 administrator job categories.  Questions in the library can be used as-is of tailored to meet the individual needs of their organization, department, and/or a particular position.

There is a one-time, flat fee of $300 for unlimited use of the Library within your organization.

To learn more about the Administrator Questions Library, or to order them, click here.

Mark Applicant as Hired Update

AppliTrack has been updated to include a feature that will allow you to identify the specific vacancy for which a particular applicant is being hired in a much easier manner.  Once you hire an applicant, open the applicant's NotePad.  Next, in the "Hired" area, choose "Yes".  Then, AppliTrack will prompt you to identify the specific vacancy that the applicant will be filling.  Additionally, you will be able to state the date that the position was filled and deactivate the posting on the same screen.

Polaris Continuous Improvement Study

If you use the Polaris TeacherFit and/or JobFit tools, you will notice an additional feature when you mark an applicant as "Hired".  Now, you can have automated performance surveys sent to the new hire's principal.  The principal will then receive a survey about the new hire's job performance six months and twelve months after their hire date.  This data will allow us to validate the Polaris tools and you to follow your new hires to ensure that high performing applicants on the Polaris tools also are high performers on the job.  

AppliTrack has been updated to include a new feature that allows you to associate a folder with a specific job vacancy.  The primary value of this new feature is that you have the ability to access all of your applicants to a specific job posting- i.e., screened applicants, interviewed applicants, released applicants, etc.- from the Find by Vacancy screen.

To use this new update, simple select the vacancy to which the folder should be associated when creating the folder.  This will allow your folders for the vacancy to appear under the vacancy in the Find by Vacancy screen.

To learn more about creating folders and Search Folders (folders that allow you to save previous searches), click here.

You may have noticed that AppliTrack has a bit of a new look.  The Administrative side of AppliTrack received a subtle facelift in order to give it look and feel that is consistent with the Applicant side of AppliTrack.  Along with the updated look, we will have the ability to provide some pretty neat new features that will further enhance your experience with AppliTrack.

We hope you enjoy the new design!

Happy New Year!

To help ring in 2011, we've released some cool updates in AppliTrack that should make things even easier for you.

Creating Folders
Now, when you create a folder and provide access to the folder to AppliTrack users, each user's name will be highlighted in GREEN once you select his or her name. Additionally, all selected users will be listed at the top of the list upon selection.

Routing Vacancies
When routing a vacancy to a specific user, a filter has been added that allows you to quickly type in the vacancy name or location while AppliTrack displays the results that match what you've typed "on the fly".  You may then select the vacancy that you would like routed to that user.  It is no longer necessary to scroll through all of your vacancies in search of the appropriate vacancy!

Of course, we are looking forward to many more updates in 2011!