District Snapshot

District

School City of Hobart

Location

Hobart, Indiana

Students

4,000 students

Staff

500 employees

Across six schools

Key Contact

Jon Mock

Director of Human Resources & Compliance

The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve	What the New Frontline Recruiting & Hiring Addresses
The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve A shrinking applicant pool and candidates who dropped off before reaching the interview stage.	What Frontline Addresses More qualified candidates find open roles and complete applications without dropping off halfway through.
The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve Candidate status lived across emails and phone calls, with no shared view between HR and principals.	What Frontline Addresses HR and principals stay aligned without the email chain, so strong candidates do not stall while people wait for updates.
The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve Administrators varied widely in how they used available tools, leading to inconsistent processes and missed interview windows.	What Frontline Addresses Every candidate gets a consistent, timely process regardless of which building or administrator is doing the hiring.
The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve Recruiting happened informally through phone calls and mutual connections, with no way to track interest inside the system.	What Frontline Addresses Hobart can build a pipeline before a vacancy becomes urgent, rather than scrambling when a position opens.
The Issues Hobart Needed to Solve The handoff from hiring to onboarding still involved manual steps and some paper, reducing the quality of the new hire experience.	What Frontline Addresses New hires arrive on day one already onboarded, leaving orientation time for culture and connection, not paperwork.

A Long Partnership 

Jon Mock has led Human Resources at the School City of Hobart since 2014. In that time, Hobart — a district of approximately 4,000 students and 500 employees across six schools in Northwest Indiana — has steadily grown its use of Frontline’s platform across recruiting, absence management, time and attendance, and employee lifecycle management. That depth of experience matters. 

Mock’s team is small: himself, a substitute coordinator and pre-employment specialist, a payroll officer, and a benefits officer, so efficiency is not just a nice-to-have. And for years, Frontline’s connected People solutions have been the foundation that makes it possible.

So, when Frontline’s new Recruiting & Hiring platform was announced, Mock’s reaction was immediate: “We were super excited and jumped right on board. Yep, absolutely! Sign me up as soon as you can.” The decision came easy for Mock. It was the logical next step in a platform Hobart already trusted. 

A Shrinking Pool Makes Every Part of the Process Matter More 

Hobart faces a challenge familiar to districts across the country: fewer people are applying. Mock recalled routinely receiving 50 to 75 applications for an elementary teaching position when he started in 2014. Today, they might only receive 25. For harder-to-fill roles such as mechanics, bus drivers, and other technical positions, the pipeline can run dry for months at a time. 

In that environment, every barrier in the application process has real consequences. Lengthy applications and the inability for candidates to see where they were in the hiring process led some to abandon their effort. Mock described receiving direct feedback from applicants who found the process too cumbersome to finish.

Mobile accessibility was a core part of what needed to change. Mock put it plainly: “Gone are the days of ‘I’ve got a home computer and a home printer.’ If I can’t do it on my phone, I’m probably not going to do it.” The new platform’s mobile-friendly application experience, combined with K12JobSpot reach and the ability to reapply using a stored profile in as little as 90 seconds, directly addresses where candidates were dropping off.

Visibility: The Missing Link Between HR and Hiring Managers

Inside the hiring process, the coordination challenges were just as significant. Candidate status lived across emails and phone calls, with no single view that HR and principals shared. Reliance on back-and-forth phone tag caused missed windows that could not be recovered. The inconsistency was not a people problem, it was a process problem. Mock was direct when asked what remained the biggest obstacle in hiring: communication and visibility.

The new platform’s structured hiring stages and shared workspace address exactly this. When every team member — HR, principals, and department administrators — works from the same funnel, with notes and status updates visible to all, the phone calls asking, “What’s happening with the applicants for the 2^nd grade teacher role?” become unnecessary. Accountability is built into the process. 

Governing Principal Participation Consistently Across Buildings 

Consistency has also been an ongoing challenge. When process quality varies by building, outcomes vary, and the candidates who get lost in the process are the ones most likely to accept another offer first. 

The new platform’s structured funnels and governed workflows create a repeatable process regardless of which administrator or department is doing the hiring. Mock sees consistency as one of the platform’s clearest practical benefits, which is a process that works the same way across every building, regardless of who is doing the hiring.

Proactive Recruiting: Getting Ahead of Openings Before They Become Emergencies

August is Hobart’s pressure test. That is when principals return from summer break and need positions filled quickly, before the first day of school — positions that, in Mock’s view, needs the same quality vetting. “We still have to go through our processes and make sure we’re putting the right person in place.”

Proactive recruiting tools give Hobart a way to get ahead of that crunch. Before, reaching out to a prospective candidate often meant a phone call through a mutual connection, a personal email, or asking someone to pass along a link — with no way to track that interest inside the system until a formal application appears. Mock sees the new capability as opening a new world: the ability to identify, invite, and manage prospective candidates before a position is even posted.

Closing the Loop: Hire to Onboard in One Connected Path

For Mock, one of the most compelling aspects of the new platform is what happens after the hiring decision is made. With their old system, the handoff from recruiting into onboarding still involves some manual steps and residual paper, narrowing the window Hobart has to welcome a new hire and establish culture before they’ve even walked in the door.

Because data from Frontline Recruiting & Hiring carries forward into Frontline Central — which Hobart already uses for onboarding, contracts, and digital employee files — a new hire can move from offer accepted to onboarding packet received without leaving the ecosystem. The goal Mock has in mind: by the time a new employee shows up for orientation, the only things left to discuss are perhaps questions about benefits and what to expect on the first day.

“We absolutely can spend more time getting them accustomed to the culture, making them feel welcome, and setting them up for success,” Mock said, “rather than spending time focused on filling out this form or that form.”

Why Now: Acting Early Before the Next Hiring Season

Hobart’s decision to become an early adopter reflects both urgency and confidence. The urgency is real: with August approaching and an applicant pool that’s already smaller than it used to be, every week of a clunky application process is a week that strong candidates could be accepting offers elsewhere.

Confidence comes from the relationship. Hobart has been building on Frontline’s platform for more than a decade, and that foundation gives Mock a clear-eyed sense of what connected technology can do when it works together. The new Recruiting & Hiring platform is not a standalone bet; it is the missing piece in a system Hobart is already running.

What Hobart Will Be Watching After the First Hiring Season

Mock has identified two metrics that will tell him whether the investment is delivering:

Near-Term Indicator

Time to Hire

Are roles moving faster from posting to offer? Are bottlenecks visible and fixable? Is the August crunch more manageable?

Longer-Term Measure

Retention Rate

Are the people Hobart is hiring staying? Is a smoother, more candidate-friendly process producing better fits?

Those are not just aspirational goals, they are the natural outcome of a hiring process that is faster, more visible, and more consistent from the first application through the first day on the job.

The Decision in Their Own Words

Hobart is not starting from scratch. The district has been building on Frontline’s platform for years, and that foundation gives Mock confidence heading into the next chapter. With the right tools in place, Hobart is positioned to find great candidates faster, bring them in the door sooner, and retain them for the long haul.