O&O Personnel Coordinator

Dear 2021-2022 Personnel Coordinator,

Hello, and congratulations on your new position! 🙂

It’s my pleasure to welcome you to the ASUW family. You’re about to spend a year in close proximity with some of the most awesome, creative, intelligent, and genuine student leaders at UW, and I hope you enjoy and learn from the job as much as I did. Before you dive in to this community of student activists, I just want you to take a few moments to really think about what we (you!) do at ASUW. Behind every entity, director, event, and program is a dedication to serving and representing all UW students. Trust me, there will be days when that feels just like something we tell students at the front desk. But when you think about it, the fact that we have 60+ employees, tons of volunteers and interns, and 20+ entities, is a constant testament to our power and presence. And that’s pretty cool.

As Personnel Coordinator, your office is the entire 121 Suite, your headquarters are the front desk, and your point person is the incoming Personnel Director. Beyond that, the job is what you make of it. Below, I’ve included some of the guidelines and tips for your main tasks, but every AA experience will be different, and you definitely figure it out as you go. My best piece of advice is to get to know as many of your co-workers as possible. Not only does it help your job in what is basically “ASUW Human Resources” easier, but they will be some of the coolest co-workers you will ever have, and fantastic connections to maintain throughout your time at UW and hopefully after.

I have a quick side note about language! Formerly, the Personnel Coordinator was known as the Administrative Assistant to the Personnel Director, but myself, alongside the Personnel Committee, recently petitioned to change the name to better reflect the characteristics of the position. If you see the former name in any documents, login info, etc., feel free to change it or ask for assistance in changing it to the new name.

I also want to give a HUGE shout out to Maekara Keopanapay, the Administrative Assistant to the Personnel Director from 2019-2020, who provided the vast majority of this information that I pass on to you!  Unfortunately, a large part of the PC role this past year, due to remote operations, was greatly modified. So, I cannot provide a ton of advice directly pertaining to what in-person operations look like. (Anything in the following notes that is written in italics is taken directly from her and her experience with in-person operations!) Thankfully, she has set up a lot of the basics here for you, and I’m sure Jennifer Pope, your SAO advisor, will also be fantastic guidance.

If you ever have any questions about anything, please don’t hesitate to email or text. I may not be as quick with my responses, but I promise you, I am always happy to help!

Cheers,

Katie Rabus (she/her)

2020-2021 Personnel Coordinator

rabusk@uw.edu

360.931.0275

UW NetID Login
• Username: asuwaa1
• Password: 2018aa2PD (I never changed it lol)

Email
• Username: asuwaa1@uw.edu
• Password: 2018aa2PD

Slack
• Email: asuwaa1@uw.edu
• Username: aa_personnel ← change “personnel” to your first name
• Password: reset this via the email from Slack in the asuwaa1 inbox

RSO Center
• Print code (shared with other AAs): asuw-bod
• Print code (for personnel material): asuw-hr

SAO Copy Machine
• Code: 1167

On Campus Box Number
• 362238

HUB Reservations (make sure to ask the PD if it’s okay to make room reservations on their behalf!)
• Username: asuwpd@uw.edu
• Password: roomreservationsarehard1

General (All Quarters)

• Office Hour Checks: I recommend sitting down with the Personnel Director (PD) early in the quarter and deciding how you want to do these. The way we did this was by going through hours.asuw.org at the beginning of every week to ensure that everyone posted their hours (hours should be up by Sunday night, so Monday morning ideally). From there, we would simply check who was in their office when we were working. A good rule of thumb is doing office hour checks by 30 minute blocks (i.e. 1:00-1:30 PM). Each quarter, I also made spreadsheets for each week to keep track of the employees who were there and who were not. If there is someone you consistently do not see in their office during their office hours, check with the PD for any further steps. (For examples/template of office hours spreadsheets, check out the “Katie + Gabby” folder on your Google Drive account.)
• General Front Desk Management: This is a very front-facing role. A lot of students, parents, and strangers will come up to you with questions about what ASUW is, what ASUW does, and how they can get involved. In the beginning, don’t be worried about asking for help. You can direct them to the Office of Outreach and Involvement for ways to get involved in internships and volunteer work, or our ASUW websites for more info. I recommend learning a little about each entity early in the quarter (going and meeting with all employees/directors is a good idea too) so you’re ready for any questions that come your way. Also, because our employees are the best.
• Conference Room Request: This past year, I was responsible for scheduling the ASUW Conference Room. I used this form https://goo.gl/forms/ZW8qVtWBdutgeH6D3 which sends you a notification whenever someone submits a request. A lot of people will ask how to request the conference room. (You will tell them, and then they will forget). I’ve put the link to the Google Form in the Slack account description as well, so if you’re asked by an employee you can send them there. I would recommend a first-come-first-serve basis; if someone wants to use the conference room without a reservation, they can, so long as it’s not already reserved.

Additional Tasks (Fall/Winter Quarter)

• Hiring Research: In Fall quarter, I would make an effort to read through the Personnel Policy and ASUW Bylaws and have some familiarity with them. I would also read through last year’s Personnel Hiring Packet so you can start to know how our hiring process goes. There may also be unfilled positions in which you would have to chair the hiring committee, so it’s always good to be prepared before a project like that comes along! I suggest this during Fall quarter because you’ll have the most free time.
• Hiring Outreach Preparation: Something that will make life easier when hirings start is having a list of people, places, and groups to reach out to during hiring outreach. Our jobs always need more advertising and an easy way to get them out there is to directly email UW departments, major listservs, RSOs and other student groups, etc. It would be a cool idea to go through each job/entity and come up with a list beforehand of where we can do targeted outreach for our jobs before hirings go full force in Spring Quarter.
• Personnel Change Requests: You’ll be getting ready for this in Fall and going through them in Winter. This is a chance for employees and entities to analyze their job descriptions and roles and propose changes to them. All of this will be in coordination with the PD and with the Personnel Committee.
  
• Personnel Newsletter: Since I had less responsibilities during Fall-Winter, Gabby and I decided this would be a cool responsibility to take up! I had fun and was creative with this, and it really cheered folks up to add little segments like “guess the baby picture” or “songs of the week!” It would be super cool if you could continue this in the coming year. I used Canva to make the newsletters, and I uploaded some examples to the Google Drive under the folder “Katie + Gabby.”

Additional Tasks (Winter Quarter)

• Training Personnel Committee for Hirings: The PD may need help organizing the PC Retreat that happens during Winter quarter, which helps PC members understand and prepare for the hirings in Spring.
• Prepare Hiring Packets: Because of COVID-19, I’m currently working from home (a whole different experience). Lucky for you, I have printed a ton of the necessary documents and hiring folders for employees! Certain documents might change, but overall, they should all be the same or fairly similar.

Additional Tasks (Spring Quarter)

• Hirings. Hirings. Hirings: Post fliers on campus and outreach to academic departments, majors and minors, RSOs, other campus and student groups, literally anyone you can think of. A lot of people don’t know about our jobs and your life is much easier when there’s a lot of job applications.
  • For the 2021 hiring season, we utilized the Instagram account for ASUW to promote hirings! I highly recommend that yourself and the Personnel Director coordinate with OComm for this, particularly with the OComm Director and the Visual Designers. The earlier you start planning this, the better! Gabby (former Personnel Director) and I realized it would have been the best plan of action to meet with the OComm Director before the end of Winter Quarter (or at least relatively far-out from the start of hiring season) so we could be as strategic in our outreach as possible.
  • We also experimented with hosting Instagram lives for Q&A sessions about the hiring season, and interviewed some of the current folks in the ASUW staff! This could be a cool idea to look into if you and the Personnel Director are interested.
• More Hirings. Hirings. Hirings: Making sure all pre-hires are scheduled and have rooms. Your primary ones should be the ASUW Conference Room (121C), HUB 303, SAO Conference Room (HUB 232) and the Conference Room in HUB Accounting (305H).

• Personnel Committee (PC): You will be taking minutes at all PC meetings, preparing agendas for all PC meetings, and uploading all the approved documents on records.asuw.org to be in compliance with the Open Public Meeting Act (Director of Internal Policy will be leading an OPMA training for all AAs, but feel free to ask me any questions as well).
  • Tip: You need to be present for ALL Personnel Committee meetings!! If there is a scheduling conflict, or last-minute emergency, do your best to quickly get ahold of either of the other AAs, in addition to the Personnel Director. I was lucky enough to get one of the other AAs to fill in for me in taking minutes one time- which was an absolute lifesaver!
• PC Shared Drive: Create a Personnel Committee shared drive on Google Drive for the committee and create the same labeled folders from the PC 2020-2021 drive into the new one. I recommend modeling the organization for the new drive after this (re: organization, sub-folders, etc.)
• Uploading to the Records Page: Personnel Committee meetings are subject to the Open Public Meetings Act, so you have to register meetings and upload agendas and minutes in order to be in compliance. (That sounded serious but it’s not that bad I swear!). Here are the basic steps:
  • Register the meetings. Because of the timeline, you will be registering them as “special meetings” which requires providing a date, time, and preliminary agenda for each meeting every quarter. The preliminary agenda can be incredibly basic, with little more than just the headers and one or two agenda items. Determine the weekly meeting time for Personnel Committee meetings ASAP for Autumn Quarter, reserve a weekly room, and then try to do both of these things before the start of the quarter for Winter and Spring.
  • Upload the draft agenda on the ASUW Records page at least 24 hours before the scheduled time of each meeting. Coordinate with the Personnel Director to know what should go on each agenda. After the meeting you will upload the approved agenda with any additions, modifications, or deletions.
  • If need be, coordinate with the Personnel Director to send out a reminder email the week of the meeting.
  • Print the agenda and any additional materials as requested by the Personnel Director. Make copies for all committee members, and one for yourself which you should keep as a hard copy in the Personnel Committee binder.
  • Complete and print 1 copy of the previous meetings’ minutes for the committee to sign and approve.
• Minutes: Fun! Everyone takes minutes differently, so don’t be afraid to figure out what works for you. We’re only legally required to transcribe all the motions and votes that take place during meetings, so don’t stress about typing out every single word spoken. I found that the best way to go about it was typing the intent of the words, rather than the words verbatim. You can also record the meetings using your phone or the office records and transcribe them afterwards. When the committee looks over the minutes, they can point out mistakes or slightly change their words to reflect what they meant.
  • You can visit the records website to view different models of minutes taken over previous years, including my own! (I tended to be fairly in-depth with my minutes, but that does not mean you have to do the same!) I recommend looking at some of the Personnel Committee examples from 2019-2020 year, and also the examples from the F&B Committee Meetings of the 2020-2021 year (and mine of course, if you’re interested lol!)
• After the meeting: Upload approved minutes to the ASUW Records page. Upload updated and approved agenda to the ASUW Records page. File the hard copy agenda and additional materials. 

• Prepare hiring packets: The current PD worked on the hiring packet herself, but a general overview of the necessary forms include:
  • Confidentiality Statement: Read it aloud before every pre-hire then send it around the room to be signed by each committee member.
  • Criteria Rubric: This form is for the pre-hire, which is where the committee goes through all redacted applications and grades them according to criteria that has been decided upon by the committee. Applications are given code names and graded on the criteria from 1-5, with 5 being the best score.
  • Criteria Roadmap: This is used for interviews. So you’ll print out a lot of these, since you’ll need enough copies for each committee member for each candidate (so # of interviews x # of committee members). The same criteria from before will be listed in the roadmap.
  • Final Justification: At this point, the committee has finished all interviews and is deciding which candidate to choose. It’s important to provide justifications not only for why you pick the top candidate, but why you didn’t pick the other interviewees.
  • Reference Check: Before we can make an offer to a candidate, we have to call one of their references and complete a reference check.

• I recommend getting all the hiring packets prepared before Winter Quarter ends, so that all you have to do Spring Quarter is print applications and edit/print interview questions. And this starts right away!
• Redact applications! Names, numbers, addresses, portfolio/LinkedIn links, names of references, and names of sororities/fraternities are the most common redactions. The easiest way to redact is by using some kind of app like Microsoft Paint to redact all the applications, making it easier to print off multiple copies.
• Assist committee members with scheduling pre-hire meetings and interviews. This will get crazy, so the better you are at organizing this and staying on top of things, the better.
• Chair the appropriate hiring committees you’re assigned to. You’ll likely chair (or sit on) the AA interviews at the end of the cycle, and you might take on other committees depending on what happens with the committee (if someone has an emergency, for example).
• Talk with the PD to see how they would like to organize the hiring calendar (jobs closing dates, interview questions edited, pre-hire times, etc.). One thing – make sure to look at how the hiring calendar lines up with the academic calendar!

• Assist the Personnel Director with whatever they need!
• Update the big calendar board with meetings, events, and activities. Share responsibility with other AA’s (or if one person wants to take charge, that’s fine too!).
• Keep the 121/131 Suites clean and organized.
• Check mail in SAO office.
• Check the ASUW Conference Room calendar (access through google calendar) to help other employees schedule meeting times.
  • All requests will go to you. I send out confirmation emails or Slacks after requests come in.
• Help keep track of and order office supplies with the other AAs. Talk to the Finance and Budget Director for more details on your office budget.
• Update your office hours and weekly reports at hours.asuw.org by Sunday night every week!

All offices have their own phone number, and the BOD members that don’t have offices typically share a phone with an extension number that differs from the main office line.

1. Finding the extension number:
The employee directory should have each office’s phone number, the extension number used to transfer calls are the last 5 digits of the number. If the numbers aren’t on the directory, you can find them on the phones themselves. If you press the phone button on any office phone, the number on the first line that shows up in the screen will be their extension number

2. Transferring the call:
Press the transfer option on the phone screen,
Type in the ext. number for the office or person,
Wait on the line until someone answers, then press the complete button (if you don’t press complete it doesn’t work and you hang up on the caller),
Now you can hang up.

Tips:
• Check office hours of the person you’re trying to reach and/or send them a slack message to let them know a call is coming.
• A lot of people think they’re not supposed to answer their phones because they think the call is just going to the main office line. So, let people know that if one of the first 2 lights are going off on their phones, it means someone is directly trying to call them (this is when a Slack heads-up might come in handy).
• Practice with the other AAs because it can be a little tricky. Just have someone call the main line on their cell and try to transfer the call to another phone.
• The business cards don’t always have the right phone number on them, so I suggest using the directory (we printed on out and kept it at the front desk for easy use).