Share: mail

Little to no progress has been made by PCC in filling the 36 new full-time faculty positions—a number that was agreed upon back in November—as the software being used to collect and evaluate applications, Cornerstone, has been automatically rejecting applicants due to a number of severe glitches.

“A system like this should have never been launched with this number of applicants,” Interim Superintendent-President Robert Miller said. “But, in the PCC way, it happened.”

The main problem that applicants are running into is as that they will submit their application and then never receive a confirmation email. Then they will receive a notification that their file has been closed.

“There are some very angry applicants,” said Faculty Association Grievance Officer Suzanne Anderson.

Cornerstone is also allowing major security breaches. When an applicant fills out an application, the software saves their information to the computer that the applicant is applying from. In other words, anyone can access said applicant’s information if they have access to their computer.

The FA has filed a complaint with the Chancellor’s office and are waiting for their ruling on whether or not there has been a violation of Title 5, Anderson said.

There was another instance where four applicants were contacted after experiencing technical difficulties and they were told that their spots would be held while everything is sorted out. Those openings were instead left to the discretion of the department chairs. When everything was all said and done, only one of these spots remained open, according to Anderson.

Faculty Association President Julie Kiotas said that the psychology department saw a four-day period in which the system would turn on and off intermittently.

Other noted glitches that were mentioned at Monday’s Academic Senate meeting included Cornerstone failing to recognize applicants’ degree completions, as well as a glitch where letters of recommendation were not showing up.

“I witnessed some of these problems first hand,” said Martha House.

Terry Hampton, the executive director of Human Resources, has been traveling to colleges in the area that also use Cornerstone in hopes to find a solution to these problems. She could not be reached for comment on this story.

“…The District would not characterize the implementation as having ‘issues,’” said Joseph Simoneschi-Sloan, executive director of business services in an email, “as we have gone over and beyond all that is reasonable in order to ensure every applicant was treated in a fair, equitable and humane manner.”

Follow: rssyoutubeinstagrammail

2 Replies to “Hiring headaches”

  1. Is Bob Miller bothered that his measly “10” faculty hires had to be increased to “35”? It would be a definite loss of face to anyone. Consequently, he seems to have no interest in fixing the hiring mess, in fact, he may enjoy it in a creepy kind of way. How to get even for a wounded pride? Call this mayhem just a computer glitch, laugh it off with a chuckle, pass the buck, and assure that it’s all being addressed. (“That will show them.”)
    We would have hoped that our leadership is above that. Stay tuned.

  2. Interim President Bob Miller sheepishly admitting to the faculty senate that this is just one example of the “PCC way” is an indicator of his status quo leadership. Who is running the administrative show, if not the Interim President? What kind of liabilities do these problems bring to the college? His suggestion at the meeting to deal with this next year rather than now falls below PCC’s standard for excellence, and PCC needs a leader that will return it to its previous reputation and caliber.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.