Brian P.

Iggins HCM Unit 1 Reflection

September 27, 2015
The first strong reaction I had to a reading was really in Chapter three when I noticed that
the first issue that was mentioned as impacting recruitment was affirmative action and not public
image. This made me laugh in the sense that I believe a schools image is the MOST important
aspect, even when it comes to recruitment. Notre Dame is located in a town of 100,000 people
in Northern Indiana, where it snows 3 months out of the year and traveling to is not easy, yet
people flock to it. That is because of image and mission and that is ultimately what attracts
people most to you. While I agree that discriminating is not helpful either, as we learned over
the summer, mission is the most helpful characteristic of a school. I also found it interesting how
other modes of finding teachers outside of posting on a school website. This is how our school
currently conducts itself, but I want to suggest to my principal to look at new and inventive ways
to get our positions out there. The one idea in particular would be to talk to local Catholic
colleges and promote our school there with young, energetic, smart students. I also loved the
idea of the recruitment brochure and believe that this would be an awesome recruitment tool.
Human resources planning generally struck a chord with me in the sense that the book in
my opinion failed to connect to the ideas presented by Groome and Brown on Catholic education
and why it works, which is the educating of the entire child. I particularly enjoyed the line in the
book that talked about having to make cuts based on enrollment and lack of funds because in a
Catholic school, I believe this would be the LAST resort because the mission is generally to
maintain a positive culture founded in Jesuss messages of love. The part in the text that
followed on litigation and its prevalence in RIF situations also struck me as out of place with the
mission of Catholic schools. While I am not nave to this idea, it flies in the face of the idea that
Brown mentioned as most vital for workers in a Catholic school, which is ENVIRONMENT. As
a new teacher just last year, I have tried to go out of my way to promote this positive

Brian P. Iggins HCM Unit 1 Reflection

September 27, 2015
environment with two new teachers in my department. This spirit and image of a school help to
guard against litigation and staying true to that promotes the school in a most positive light.
A smaller component that stuck out with me was the claim in Rebore that neglecting to
utilize technology would be akin to shirking responsibilities as a leader. This was an interesting
claim that I would have never thought about but it is similar to advancing and modernizing any
aspect of the school and it should connote less work and ease of task for all involved, for thus is
the reason for technology. I am not 100% sure if our school has a technological resource
database but I suspect we do not. This is an area that Catholic schools can sometimes fall behind
in because technology usually requires heavy financial investment. The challenge is to justify
the use of a database to the administration and the CFO of the school. I intend to discuss this
with my principal and if there is not a database, I think it is a wise thing to look into because it
creates institutional memory and serves the school to find the types of people we need or want
for vacant positions. Just this past year, I was part of the interview process on a social studies
teacher that ended up not choosing our school. They were brilliant and if there is another open
position, I would want to go after him. A database could create a lasting impression of this
person and potentially help the school again later.
In line with hiring, I also really loved the Ende article which talked about changing the
process for different candidates. I think this is a wonderful idea because the qualifications and
questions for each job are different, and thus should not be pigeonholed. If we approach this
from an educational viewpoint, we could think about how we differentiate assignments for kids
and thus the same could be done. I want to ask around to see if this is being done already and if
not, pass my suggestions along to my department head and/or principal to try and look at the
hiring process and how we are engaging potential candidates, down to the questions being asked.