Among the University's staff, as with students and faculty, the representation of Hispanics is not consistent with their proportions in the general population. Their numbers are generally concentrated in the areas of services, physical plant operations, clerical, and student services positions. University formulas for assessing the extent of underutilization of the Hispanic population in the University's work force, however, can manipulate the numbers sufficiently to give the appearance significantly that the University is not doing too badly in staff affirmative action. The flaw in the conversion scheme is that utilization is based upon census data enumerating Hispanics in various jobs in the local, State or national workforce, and adjustments related to the numbers of Hispanics who are preparing for these jobs. Thus the University's resulting self-assessment that it is not underutilizing Hispanics in many staff classifications

actually is based upon numbers which reflect the inequities in society at large. Here too, the University may say it is doing "as well as anyone else."

Looking beyond the numbers, two particular and basic sets of experiences appear to impact significantly upon the University's ability to increase its Hispanic workforce: the hiring process and training and promotion. As with many other discussions in this report, attention to these matters will improve the quality of the entire University staff.

Recruitment, Application, Interview

Several years ago, the University abandoned its largely centralized hiring functions in favor of extreme decentralization. Applicants were required to submit separate applications for each position for which they believed themselves to be qualified. Verification of such qualifications through the administration of standardized tests of knowledge and skills was discontinued (and viewed with extreme disfavor) and the validation of references was deferred to the final steps of the hiring process. The selection of applicant pools was delegated to the hiring department, with varying degrees of monitoring from the Personnel Office; and interviews were conducted only in the hiring department. While few supervisors are human resource specialists," they began to make hiring decisions alone. On some campuses, elaborate and time-consuming affirmative action monitoring procedures were established to review the supervisors' decisions, and supervisors became increasingly competent at developing rationales in support of their selections which satisfied the order to select "the best qualified applicant," as determined by "directly-related skills and knowledge."

At no point during a long and complex application and interview process does anyone evaluate the total applicant in relation to the many different kinds of work the University offers. The evaluation of "transferable skills" is rarely made by the interviewing supervisor who is not, after all, a personnel specialist. The result is a process which is impersonal, narrowly focused, unfriendly, unresponsive, and discouraging to all but the most determined applicant with access to a copy machine.

Recruitment programs in the traditional sense of sending professionals out to identify likely candidates and interest them in University employment are extremely rare in the University. Recruiting, in the staff sense, means advertising from a scale as small as posting on the Personnel Office bulletin board to nationwide advertising (funded by the department involved and only in cases of higher-level positions requiring some rare skill or experience).

Training, Promotion

The successful new hire arrives for his/her first day of work typically having met only the hiring supervisor. New employee orientation may occur from one to six months after initial employment. Various opportunities for job-specific or job-advancement training courses may be offered. Records of an employee's participation in or successful completion of such training may be kept in the department, in some personnel offices, or not at all. Some supervisors may be highly dedicated toward the career development of motivated employees; others are disinterested or even obstructive. And, except in the case of reclassification (another supervisor-controlled action), the University employee seeking promotion must re-enter the seemingly endless application/interview cycle.

The advent of collective bargaining brought with it an adversary relationship between management and staff which further dehumanized the University's personnel processes. Personnel offices became increasingly management-oriented and the flexibility which had previously distinguished the University's personnel policies disappeared, to be replaced by rigid application of contractual agreements and the intervention of union representatives in the supervisor/employee relationship.

In discussions with staff members about the problems the University experiences in terms of its Hispanic populations, it is interesting to note two major repetitive themes.

First, staff members are aware of the importance of increasing the diversity of the faculty and student populations, and frequently are diverted to discussion of these difficulties rather than those specific to staff employees. The relationship of staff members to the student population, and the responsibilities they hold for recruiting, admitting, registering, housing, advising, and recording the progress of students are of paramount importance.

Second, when discussion is redirected to the status of staff members as employees of the University, from the of personal goals and the University's use of its human resources, members of minority groups, women, and white men express the same frustrations. The University has no career ladder for staff members, and training programs are aimed at lower clerical levels.

· The University has no career ladder for staff members, and training programs are aimed at lower clerical levels.

· Mentoring programs are extremely small, accommodating very few individuals each year at each campus.

· Outside recruitment result in closure of positions at higher levels to University employees who may have prepared for them.

· The personnel offices are unconcerned with the development of individual employees.

· University training courses are given lit-tie weight- in promotion decisions; somehow they lack validity in the eyes of the hiring authority.

· Minorities who have achieved at least- the A&PS level are, as with faculty, overburdened with obligations of commit-tee service, pressured by the minority community t-o enter into its particular activities, and are attending meeting after meeting, to the detriment of their performance of the direct responsibilities on which they are evaluated. Such service to the University is held in low esteem in merit and promotion decisions.