Elevating our ability to attract, recruit, hire and onboard UC Davis employees for the future
The Hiring Experience is a two-year effort to accelerate successful hiring and improve employee retention at UC Davis Health. This multi-pronged initiative includes partners in UC Davis HR, service channels, Health IT, Operational Excellence, Experience Design — and eventually all hiring managers. With improvements starting now, the plan calls for addressing all steps in the hiring process, from opening a job through onboarding.
With streamlined processes, better data, smarter tools and training, we're turning the hiring process into a welcome and rewarding experience for all involved.
- Initially, this work is being implemented at UC Davis Health, but improvements are coming to the Davis campus too. Both campuses have different needs and priorities and this effort is tailoring solutions based on what we’re hearing from customers.
How We're Elevating Hiring for Lasting Starts
In 2023, UC Davis Health and the Davis campus experienced significant workforce growth during a time of enormous challenges.
Initial analysis of our full recruitment cycle— which included feedback from UC Davis employees, recruiters and recruiting departments— uncovered many opportunities for improvements. Here's how The Hiring Experience plans to address them:
Current Challenges
at UC Davis Health
Overarching Goal and Outcomes
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Enhanced Candidate Experience
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The process to hire one new employee currently requires:
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Improved Processes and Tools
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Better Experience for Hiring Manager and the HR Team
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It's easy to identify the problem — too many systems, steps and hands involved — but we've never coalesced around the solutions. We're seeking commitments on the future state because it's going to take all of us to make it a reality."
– Jim Hankins, Executive Director for the Shared Services Organization
Timeline at UC Davis Health and Technology Improvements for Campus
Updated 11/03/2023

Improvement Efforts Underway
The Hiring Experience will address a variety of policies, procedures, technologies and employee training. The first of our improvement efforts are already rolling out. You can track progress using the scorecard below, which will be updated weekly.
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The Hiring Experience Scorecard (Updated 12/07/23)
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A few key updates include:
- THX Campus Advisory Committee, established to provide guidance and input that ensures campus interests are considered and that we’re realizing a customer-focused approach to full-cycle recruitment improvements, met on November 8, 2023 and will continue to meet monthly with the Program leaders and team to support decision-making.
- Several rapid improvement events are underway and a set of improvement opportunities were identified and initiated to be completed by the end of December. The Job description (JD) standardization work is in progress, focused on defining minimum qualifications for the top 10 JDs at UC Davis Health. Approval was obtained for Oncology CN JDs and custodian/EVS JD templates (11/3). EVS/Custodian JDs (11/20), MOSC float pool JDs (11/21). Clinical nurse JDs are in progress.
- Current state process maps were completed for all staff types which are part of the Program scope. These will help identify additional process improvements and serve as the foundation for JD mgmt and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) implementations in the coming months. Process owners were identified for all workflows and the associated governance was defined and agreed upon by the process owners. This is critical as changes are requested or made going forward to ensure process workflows stay up to date.
- The job description (JD) management implementation of JDXpert application is underway with UCOP. The build/configuration team continues its 12-week design of the campus and health instances of JDXpert. The master template was finalized. Workflows, security roles and JD import process are all underway. Testing and training planning will be initiated in mid-December.
- The Experience workstream is leading interviews to support research on the candidate and hiring manager experiences. This will assist us in developing personas and journey maps for candidates and hiring managers. There are three persona groups (hiring managers (50% complete), new hires (50% complete), and candidates that rejected an offer (50% complete). This work will wrap up in December and be shared in January.
We look forward to providing future updates and announcements as we make progress in decreasing Time-to-Hire and improving the Candidate and Hiring Manager experiences.
Scorecard Archive
Supporting the UC Davis Strategic Plan and Health Clinical Strategic Plan
TO BOLDLY GO: A Strategic Vision for UC Davis
Strategic Plan Goal 3 calls for “mak[ing] UC Davis a place of excellence for learning and working by supporting a culture that values the contributions and aspirations of all our students, staff and faculty.” We're using customer feedback to realize solutions that better serve current and future employees and the people who hire them.
UC Davis Health Clinical Strategic Plan
UC Davis Health's vision is to "deliver tomorrow’s health care today — the next generation, the next innovation, the next cure." To do that, UC Davis Health needs to educate and prepare a future-ready workforce and drive excellence in all we do.
The Hiring Experience will make significant contributions to this mission and vision, specifically when it comes to operational excellence and business process innovation.
Investing in the Future of Medicine | “Digital Davis” (Digital Health, Telehealth, IT & Analytics Infrastructure) | Integrated Research and Innovation | Operational Excellence/ Business Process Innovation |
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Creates funding opportunities to support our innovators to design and test new models of care delivery, diagnosis, and treatment. | Expands our ability to connect with patients wherever they are, conveniently and efficiently provide care, and ensure the best data and analytics inform every care decision. | Links our world-class research directly to our clinical programs and provides unparalleled access to clinical trials for our patients and partners, ensuring discoveries are rapidly translated from bench to bedside. | Drives efficiency, access, and throughput while alleviating capacity constraints to allow us to always deliver exceptional, efficient care. |
Get Involved
The key stakeholders in this effort include UC Davis HR, service channels, UC Davis Health IT, Operational Excellence and Experience Design, but we're always looking for more partners and good ideas to improve things.
- Email hr@ucdavis.edu with any questions and find out how you can get involved.
FAQ
Coming soon