Success stories from the P4 Hiring Program and more at IT Leadership Team Meeting

September 9, 2021

The following updates were shared at the August 25 IT Leadership Team Meeting:

The Lux Project: Technology Plans

Renato Cayuela invited Robert Sanderson, Yale Library’s Cultural Heritage Metadata Project Director, to share recent progress on the Lux Project. In particular, Robert walked the team through the process of developing technology plans, including the identification of 36 requirements to ensure that the system provided:

  • Speed and ease of ingesting, indexing, updating, and retrieving records
  • Speed and functionality for textual and graph search, sort, and faceting
  • Developer happiness, such as standards, client libraries, documentation, training, ease of debugging, installation, and obtaining vendor support

Four cross-unit teams were created to evaluate six platform options. In the end, the teams identified two standouts: the chosen platform, MarkLogic, and an alternative, which was an in-memory graph database. MarkLogic rose to the top because it’s a single system with fewer integrations and development. This will allow the team to spend less time “getting it to work” and more time “getting it right.” They also appreciated that MarkLogic is a platform used by other cultural heritage peers with an active GLAM (gallery, library, archive, and museum) user community. Finally, they selected MarkLogic because it is a robust, feature-rich platform with the only downside being that it will have a higher learning curve for ITS staff.

IT Governance Dashboard

Lisa Sawin and her team developed the IT Governance Dashboard to help ITS deliver on its governance responsibilities. By communicating a clear schedule of expected activities, the dashboard ensures accountability among governance partners and those responsible for governance activities. They were focused on:

  • Providing a framework to guide governance and planning
  • Leverage the insight gained through governance activities to inform leadership about gaps, risks, opportunities to better align Yale goals
  • Facilitate incorporating standards, planning, and oversight into IT service delivery
  • Enable effective communication with stakeholders and guide when and how they need to engage
  • Illustrate the annual governance cycle and best practices to share with ITS and beyond

To achieve these goals, Lisa (Sponsor) engages domain partners including: Apriel Biggs (PMO and process owner), Chris Lago (SMO), Andy Newman (Architecture), and Courtland Stretton (ITS Finance). The team also engages stakeholders, whose work is impacted by the governance process, including Service Offering Managers, Service Owners, the Department Financial Lead, Pillar Chairs, and others.

Lisa encouraged everyone to view the IT Governance Dashboard, which is publicly available in the the PMO SharePoint site and via the Tools and Resources page within the Service Management section of the About IT website. For more information or to provide input on the Dashboard, contact Lisa Sawin (lisa.sawin@yale.edu) or Apriel Biggs (apriel.biggs@yale.edu).

The P4 Direct College Hire Program – Hiring Manager Experience

Sarah Hauswirth provided an overview of the program, which started three years ago and offers graduating university students with an entry level IT role at Yale, despite having little to no experience.

When participants are hired, they are hired at a flat rate salary and spend six months working toward their goals. At six month increments, all participants in good standing will receive a salary increase through their two-year term. These participants do not participate in the merit program while they are enrolled in this program.

Diane Fusco, who heads up IT’s recruitment efforts, recruits candidates at three local universities, including UCONN, Quinnipiac University, and Southern CT State University. She attends job fairs and offers presentations to the college Computer Science clubs, posts positions on job forums, and conducts other recruitment activities within the following schedule:

  • Recruiter Interviews (September/October)
  • Hiring Manager Interviews (November)
  • Final Selection/Hiring Candidate (November/December)
  • Onboarding (January or May/June)

During this process of matching a hire to a hiring manager, she focuses on the student’s career goals as well as the needs of the IT department. From her perspective, the experience of actively recruiting for IT positions has allowed her to “promote the Yale brand and socialize the idea that there are exciting IT careers at Yale.”

Several hiring managers, who recently hired candidates through the P4 program, shared tips and highlights from their participation in the program:

  • Vidhya Narayanan, who hired a P4 candidate last year, found it helpful to “work with my candidate to understand their interests and match their responsibilities to their interests.” She also felt that it was important to “commit myself to meeting with Ryan every day during the onboarding process and involving my whole team in the recruiting and interviewing process.” Doing so ensured that everyone on her team was invested in Ryan’s success.
  • Taber Lightfoot had “a wonderful experience” working with her P4 hire, Annabelle. She felt that part of the key to successfully onboarding Annabelle was “daily one-on-one’s, for the first few weeks, to ensure that she was prepared for her role.” Taber also found it helpful to match Annabelle with mentors who were Business Analysts and User Experience professionals, to guide her along.
  • Vijayshree Erodula found it helpful to “train myself to give projects or paths that are valuable to Rayleen, to help her obtain her goal of becoming a full stack developer.” As part of this process, Vijayshree asked Rayleen to maintain a weekly status report to track her progress. She also provided Rayleen with opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, positioning her to collaborate with almost all team members and learn many new skills in a short time.

John expressed gratitude to the managers for “signaling that we’re moving the needle on our culture in a major way, by investing in the growth of the individual as well as your managerial style to support them and your whole team.” He thanked the managers for making the most of the experience.

For more information about the program, contact Sarah Hauswirth at sarah.hauswirth@yale.edu.

Ask John Anything

No questions were asked, but John shared that he’s noticed that students are excited to be back on campus enjoying Yale’s dining facilities, seeing their friends, and starting a new academic year. He’s also been excited to see colleagues on campus and looks forward to seeing the entire team in the office again soon.

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