The City of Hamilton, Ont. is the first to fully deploy PeopleSoft Canada’s eRecruit software, part of the vendor’s Enterprise suite of products. Hamilton went live with the electronic job application product for both external and internal job applicants last September, following a pilot project
with internal employees earlier in the year. The city made the move not only to increase the efficiency of its HR staff and processes, but also to prepare itself for an expected large number of retirements over the next few years.
“”The average age of a City of Hamilton employee in 2004 was 45 years,”” says Mark Amorosi, director of employment and client services in the city’s HR department. “”We know in the next 10 years up to 68 per cent of our full-time work force is going to be eligible to retire. We also know more people are going to be retiring in the next 10 to 15 years than entering the labour force, and what that means for everybody is greater competition for talent.
“”We want to be able to compete for the talent and get people interested in applying, and one of best practices way to do that is Internet recruiting.””
Hamilton, which amalgamated with the region and several smaller area cities in 2001, decided to move to PeopleSoft as part of its Y2K upgrade.
“”After doing an evaluation of it, compared to what I know of and what I have researched in terms of best practices in the industry, I could hardly wait to get (eRecruit) implemented,”” says Amorosi.