All in a day's work

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Sandra Jenks is one of those strange beings who always knew she wanted to work in university administration (ever since doing personnel work at Huddersfield). A year in the SOC School Office gave her a good knowledge of how the Schools operate, but she had a burning desire to work in central administration. She now combines managing the Staffing Services Office with studying for the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) qualification.

We're responsible for the administration of all recruitment right across the University. Since January 1999 we've advertised over 250 posts in the press and we've got over 40 on the go at the moment. We recruit everybody from manual staff to professors and we oversee everything from placing the ads to getting all the applications in, processing all the information, and then seeing candidates through to if, and when, we appoint them. We then maintain the staff side of the database.

Another highly important part of our role is to advise managers across the University on personnel issues, and to ensure that approved guidelines are followed. We all have to be abreast of current changes in the law that might affect employment issues, and of course any advice we give has to be in line with University policy. We have over 10 categories of staff here, all with their own set of contractual conditions, so we have to absorb and disseminate some quite intricate details.

Some of this information can have substantial consequences. It's incredible for example how many people try to employ others from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) without the necessary permission; one of our roles is to persuade the Home Office to allow us to employ such people, but we can't do that unless managers let us know of their intentions. On rare occasions we've had to tell people to leave the UK to allow us to apply for the proper legal entry and this obviously has a profound effect on their personal circumstances.

From advertising to appointing, ideally the whole process takes about eight weeks, although some senior teaching posts can go on for months and months.

We use the Internet a lot more now for advertising and we get a massive response from the jobs.ac.uk website; sometimes one advert for a lectureship can get over 2,000 hits. The most popular academic post we've had since I've been here would be a lectureship in English, which attracted 300 applications. Changes in technology have increased the number of applications and, generally speaking, all the posts are getting more and more popular. We get over 500 telephone calls a week, and about two-thirds of those are external, from people responding to adverts.

Most people applying to work here cite the university atmosphere and the student vibe as the main reasons. People seem to think it will be a nice culture to work in. We get lots of graduates applying for teaching, clerical and manual jobs. We'll get 300 applications through the post a week, maybe 20 by fax and 100 by email. The worst applications are the ones where people have so obviously been forced to apply by the job centre, which is a waste of time. Reasons for applying? 'Because I've been made to.'

When people start work here, they come down to the office to get their staff card so we do get to meet the people that we've been in contact with. Mostly they are grateful for what we've done.

The first point of contact within our office is Claire Green, the division's secretary, who helps us beyond the call of duty and is central to how we function. We're a great team and work extremely well together. We can get quite frazzled, especially if all five telephones are ringing, we've got two or three people waiting to be seen to in person, and we know that we've got contracts to do for people who are starting work the next day. We've worked so closely for so long that we're able to gauge when one of us is getting particularly agitated and we can compensate for each other. We all just get on very well, so that relieves a lot of the tension.

When we're not discussing work issues, the conversation usually turns to cooking, home decorating and other girlie things like football (Man Utd or Leicester). We are also the proud founders of the Sussex House staff calendar, featuring stars from Management Accounts, Catering and ACS. If you haven't seen it, come along to room 227 - it's a must!

The interesting part of this job is that no two days are the same. As we get more qualified (Sarah and Maddy are also IPD students), we're getting more involved in more interesting things. Because we've got people who are training towards their IPD, who want to pursue a career in human resources, we're all interested in personnel issues on a wider scale and we can provide a much more professional service. We really couldn't work any harder!

From left to right: Maddy Hill, Sarah Marshall, Liz Showler and Sandra Jenks.