UMass Medical School, based in Worcester, MA, has 6,200 employees based in more than 100 locations throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. While it's a young medical school -- its first class graduated in 1974 -- it is growing fast, with initiatives in research, medical policy issues, and service to disadvantaged populations including providing healthcare services to the state prison community throughout the state of Massachusetts. For Phil Kerr, Director of Human Resources of UMass Medical School, growth has been one of the biggest issues facing the human resources department.

"In the five years I've been with UMass, we've grown from 3,500 to 6,200 employees," says Kerr. "We are consistently expanding our research, teaching, and outreach activities. Our biotech facility is in the midst of a $100-million expansion. We anticipate this growth to continue over the next several years."

In addition to managing growth, Kerr and his team face hiring challenges due to the multifaceted nature of the positions. UMass recruits for typical school and administrative positions, nurses and other clinical staff, as well as researchers to support its approximately $180 million in research programs.

When the vendor of its previous recruiting software tool went out of business, UMass needed to find a solution to help it manage its growth. After an extensive review process, Kerr and his team chose First Advantage HMS, the offering of First Advantage Hiring Management Systems, a Portland, ME-based provider of applicant tracking and talent management solutions. The straightforward implementation process, ease of use, appropriate features, and an attractive price lead UMass to choose First Advantage HMS.

"First Advantage HMS didn't require months of configuration -- we were up and running in one month," says Kerr. He also liked the user-friendly, Windows-based system, which reduced training time. And the system was fitted directly to UMass requirements, meaning Kerr and his team didn’t need to be bogged down with any features they didn’t need and wouldn’t use. Because First Advantage HMS was so easy to tailor through its extensive configuration abilities, implementation was easy and fast, at significantly lower costs than traditional custom software packages.

Today, UMass receives approximately 2,000 resumes per month, which it is able to receive, review, and transmit electronically using the First Advantage HMS system. "In the past, we were approximately 90 percent paper-based," says Kerr. "With First Advantage HMS, we are 90 percent online. It's much more efficient and we are able to reduce delays in moving resumes out to our mangers." UMass also uses First Advantage Hiring Management Systems' SmartParse technology, which converts paper-based resumes into electronic files that are easier to transmit, share, and store.

In addition to receiving resumes electronically, Kerr says a majority of the school's managers now use First Advantage HMS's online requisition feature. With electronic signature capabilities, managers are speeding approval times for requisitioning new positions, and are able to start the recruiting process that much sooner. This feature is important in the research arena, where the wait for grant approval can be several months. "We tell our managers to start the recruitment process early, so when they receive approval of their grant, they can start to extend offers of employment." says Kerr.

The school also uses First Advantage HMS to develop more comprehensive hiring profiles, which Kerr credits for improving the hiring process. "It leads our managers to better define competencies and technical skills, so that we can do a better job of recruiting," says Kerr.

Despite its rapid growth, Kerr says First Advantage HMS has enabled the school to maintain a lean recruiting staff and dramatically improve recruiting staff efficiency. "We have grown by more than 1,500 employees over the last few years, but have only added three Human Resource Representatives to our staff," says Kerr. "The automation features in First Advantage HMS have helped contribute to that."

Time to hire also has been reduced, but more importantly, the school has been able to expand its recruitment efforts to a broader applicant pool. "Time to fill our clerical jobs has come down five days, and we are getting a better applicant pool," says Kerr. "We are able to do keyword searches to identify the people who have the right skills we're looking for."

Costs to recruit have gone down, even with the workforce growing. There has been a 39% decrease in advertising expenses due to the online integration capabilities of First Advantage HMS. Because First Advantage HMS captures electronic data from online resumes, Kerr has been able to use more cost-effective online advertising rather than expensive print-based sources. “We can take advantage of these web features, because the online recruiting services make posting resumes to First Advantage HMS very easy," says Kerr.

For UMass, the benefits of First Advantage HMS to date are clear: A 39% decrease in advertising expenditures, a 180-degree swing in moving from traditional paper-based processes to automated Internet-enabled processes, an increase in recruiting efficiency, and improved tools to discover and recruit hard-to-find clinical and research positions.

In the future, Kerr plans to use the data gathered in First Advantage HMS more proactively in both recruiting processes and gathering trend data. Kerr is starting to use First Advantage HMS to collect data on ethnicity and gender that it uses to drive its affirmative action system. And, he is using the historical data to determine where the school finds most of its applicants, which positions are the hardest to fill, and areas where it's most successful.

"We are very pleased with First Advantage HMS, from the product itself, to the management reports we can generate, to the responsiveness of the company itself," says Kerr. "First Advantage Hiring Management Systems has been willing to incorporate some of our suggestions into the product. The company is extremely responsive."