OLAS Jobs a Hit with Huntington
So far, so good. As the Huntington School District continues its effort to recruit the best teachers and administrators it can find, officials say their first year experience with the On-Line Application System is paying dividends.
Known by the acronym OLAS (www.olasjobs.org), the service is provided by Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES in partnership with other area BOCES. The system currently serves more than 240 school districts across the state. Huntington has already hired dozens of teachers and administrators who applied for their positions online.
“OLAS allows those seeking a job to create a profile and then easily apply for posted vacancies,” Huntington Assistant Superintendent Joseph Giani said. The list of vacancies is continuously updated throughout the day. We’ve received many applications within a couple of hours of placing a vacancy on the system.” OLAS can also be accessed from the Huntington School District’s website (www.hufsd.edu) by utilizing the Quick Click Bar drop-down screen and selecting “employment opportunities.”
Like hundreds of other districts, OLAS is now Huntington’s primary means of recruiting new faculty members. The candidate pool now amounts to more than 60,000 professionals, according to figures supplied by the system.
To alert prospective applicants to the service, OLAS has also placed ads in dozens of New York newspapers encouraging candidates to log onto its website, create a profile and apply for positions. The system also sends information about the service to colleges and universities across the country and uses internet based advertising on various sites, including Google, Yahoo and Monster.com, among others.
Mr. Giani said that Huntington’s participation in the service has enlarged its applicant pool many times over. The district is also able to contact OLAS participants in advance of a job posting to determine possible interest through a broadcast e-mail, which is especially helpful in the case of short-term or long-term leave replacement posts or part-time positions.
“It is becoming essential for districts to be included in OLAS because people seeking a job can easily spot an opening and apply for it, rather than logging onto dozens of individual school district websites or buying different newspapers and searching for an ad,” Mr. Giani said.
Huntington can even post openings for coaching positions, substitute teachers, nurses and aides. Once a vacancy is posted, applications begin arriving in the district’s electronic mailbox almost immediately.
The district is pleased with the number of job applications it is receiving through OLAS and with the quality of the applicants. “It’s a service that has really caught on within the educational community and is meeting our needs very well,” Mr. Giani said.
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