Tempt someone to work for the Hutch

General Article

Employee 'ambassadors' who received $50 gift certificates totaled 100 during the year 2000

Kara McBroom (left), program manager in Pediatric Oncology, recruited Julie Sherman, of Institutional Review, to work for the Hutch. Photo by Michelle Hruby

If you like working at the Hutchinson Center, don't keep it a secret.

Tell somebody - and entice that person to work here, too.

That's the message Kim Williams, employment and training manager, will spread throughout the Hutch this year as it looks for ways to meet its growing hiring needs in a tight labor market.

"It's called the tempt-people-even-if-they-already-have-a-job-theory," Williams said. "I'm a victim of that and I love it."

Williams - known as Kim Ervin during her earlier stint - worked at the Hutch for 10 years through 1997. She was an administrative assistant in the Public Health Sciences Division for six years and a recruiter with Human Resources for four years before taking a job as employee-relations manager with Eddie Bauer.

Williams left the Hutch because she wanted to experience a corporate environment. She returned as the employment and training manager because a former colleague at the Hutch asked her if she'd be interested. The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.

Dynamic workplace

"This is such a dynamic place," Williams said. "That's why I came back." Even so, it may never have happened had a Hutch employee not "tempted somebody not even thinking about a job to think about it," she said.

"Every employee is an ambassador to the Center. I see recruiting as a total partnership between employees and Human Resources," she said.

And being an ambassador is not without its rewards. Employees who refer someone to the Hutch can fill out an online form and if the person is hired, they receive a $50 gift certificate to the Hutch logo cart. Last year, 100 employees earned certificates, says Williams.

Williams says Human Resources will develop informational tools to help employees describe opportunities at the Hutch in the most effective way possible-including reminding people that they don't have to be a scientist to work here.

"That's part of the organization," she said. "We have hundreds of different jobs. It's like a whole world unto itself."

Enlisting employees as recruiters is just one of the strategies Human Resources will pursue in the coming year to fill the steady stream of job opportunities at the Hutch. With the state's unemployment rate hovering at an all-time low, the Center's number of unfilled jobs is also higher than normal. During any given month, there are about 70 openings.

Research positions, information technology and administrative assistants present the greatest challenges, "but it's a tight job market all the way around," Williams said, citing intense competition from the private sector. "We always want to get the best and the brightest."

Within the next few weeks, Human Resources will hold a retreat to fine tune a new recruiting model, but Williams already has some ideas. One is to shift the Hutch's reliance on traditional newspaper advertising. Instead, Williams envisions taking different approaches for different positions and making greater use of professional publications, community newspapers and Web sites to advertise jobs.

Closer ties to community

Williams also wants to forge closer ties with community organizations that help people with job-hunting skills. By serving as volunteers with organizations such as the YWCA, Human Resources staff as well as staff from throughout the Center not only would be performing a public service, they would be in a great position to get first crack at people looking for work, she said.

In addition, the Hutch intends to work with companies that are downsizing so it can contact laid off employees and tell them about opportunities that may exist for them at the Center.

All in all, "it's going to be a new year with new ideas, " Williams said. "We have to be more aggressive. It's a must."

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