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Customer Case Study
Massive Increases in Probation Officer Recruitment! SDMS Software plays
a critical role in applicant monitoring and creating a national database
of applicants
SDMS
LTD has been working with Probation Services regional training and
assessment consortia since they were created by the Home Office as part
of a national expansion of Probation Officer Recruitment in 1998. A
critical part of this has been the design and development of a software
system, which supports the recruitment process and develops an applicant
monitoring system to produce data at a National Level.
In March
1998, six consortia were established in England and Wales to manage and
administer a revised approach to the recruitment, assessment and
training of new probation officers as part of the Home Office’s revised
strategy for tackling crime and offending under Jack Straw. The Home
Office launched a National advertising campaign to stimulate interest in
becoming a Probation Officer and this was backed by local advertising
and recruitment activity. Each consortium would be responsible for
recruiting and placing successful applicants in one of the services
within their area. They would then be responsible for setting up and
managing the ongoing training leading to the Diploma in Probation
Studies.
The work
of the consortia involved all aspects of the recruitment process
including providing information to applicants, issuing application
packs, receiving and shifting initial applications, short listing and
managing the interview and assessment process through to final
appointment. At an early stage it was decided to closely monitor the
whole application process and monitor progress through the various
stages of selection. To support this each applicant would be asked to
complete a National Monitoring Form (as well as standard application
forms) the data from which would form the basis for a National Data Set
on this initiative. Initially for the Midlands Training and Assessment
Consortia but later for the Home Office, SDMS was commissioned to
develop software to support this from which two software modules were
developed.
u Applicant Monitoring
u Progress Monitoring
The
National Applicant Monitoring Form
The data was collected
anonymously but the data each applicant was asked to provide included
details of their ethnicity and race, gender, age category, employment
status, educational attainment/highest qualification, specific
vocational qualification, previous or current salary band, preferred
language and post code.
Figure 1: Scanned in Image
of National Monitoring Form
The large volumes of
applicants’ forms returned and the short time scale for data entry after
the completion of the recruitment cycle, called for software, which
allowed data to be entered simply and speedily. It was decided against
OMR/OCR technologies because of the high capital cost involved. Software design was therefore built around form and tick box style data
entry.
Figure 2: Applicant Monitoring Data Entry Screen
Monitoring data was collected during the various stages
of the selection and assessment process by interviewers and
administration, again anonymously, including the results of three or
four sifts.
·
First sift:
whether
eligible and if not whether precluded by virtue of age, criminal
convictions, not able to meet academic standard, insufficient previous
experience etc.
·
Second sift:
whether invited to assessment event, short listed, appointable etc.
·
Third sift:
range of previous experience, quality of supporting statement if
appointed, if not whether this was on the basis of not satisfying
specific criteria such as communication skills or planning ability etc.
Since the key point of the applicant monitoring exercise
was to provide information to support overall evaluation of the Home
Office recruitment scheme and the strategic thinking of consortia
mangers, reporting on the data was critical. This was achieved by
including many standard reports but also including export facilities to
MS Excel and integrated Crystal Reports into the software. Standard
reports include race identify report, ethnic report, gender, age group,
disability, employment and many other analytical style reports. Reporting encompasses specific consortia reports, comparison reports
between consortia as well as reports running on the Nationally
aggregated data.
The
software has in built imports and exports to allow individual consortia
to compile a National Data Set. This is provided as a service by SDMS
LTD with all consortia receiving each other’s data comprising a National
Data Set of all applicant data.
Implications for other Services and Recruitment
Initiatives
The
Probation Services Recruitment Initiative is underpinned by a
comprehensive National Data Set from the first year in 1999 until
today. This is a rare, if not a unique set of data allowing conclusions
to be drawn regarding the success or otherwise of the initiative and as
far as we are aware does not exist in other areas of priority public
service recruitment such as Police, Social Workers or Teachers. This
initiative shows that even at a National level this data can be
collected simply, easily, at very low cost (a few thousand pounds) and
speedily. This is clearly of value for local services such as Social
Services.
SDMS LTD is
making this software available to Social Services’ Departments and other
bodies in sector specific editions, and suitably modified as well as
incorporating the approach outlined here into its recruitment and
selection software, SDMS V Recruitment and Selection Manager. Web
enabled versions of this product as well as the Applicant Monitoring
Module are now available making data collection even simpler.
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