Liberty Hill ISD Takes Pride in Keeping Its Small Town Appeal While Welcoming Rapid Growth

A top-rated district, Liberty Hill ISD serves a rural community near Austin, Texas. The district takes pride in its strong academic and athletic programs, as well as expanding music and fine arts opportunities. Growing as fast as new homes can be built, more students are headed their way. Although there’s still a small town feel at Liberty Hill ISD, the district’s enrollment shot up by 20% over the past year and building new schools is a priority.

Bob Mabry, Executive Director of HR and Operations, wears many hats. His primary focus is human resources where he oversees big-picture projects like procedures and policies, setting and reviewing salaries, and payroll. Interviewing and hiring candidates happens almost daily, especially given the ongoing challenges faced by school districts in today’s job market to keep all positions filled.

The Challenges of Rapid Growth

Over the past six years, Bob has built the Human Resources department from the ground up. Before he came on board as the very first HR Director, hiring was done by different staff members in the central office. Last year his department’s coordinator and two HR specialists helped process a whopping 435 employees — almost a hundred of them were positions that had been added because of the district’s rapid growth.

During his second year as HR Director, Bob was frustrated with the software the district was using for online job applications. It was slow and cumbersome to work with, had limited capabilities, and customer support was non-existent.

Since the district was already using Frontline Absence & Time and bundling the products would save money, Bob decided to explore additional Frontline solutions. He began using Frontline Central to handle employee contracts. And as soon as the district implemented Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, he noticed a significant increase in the number of applicants.

Creative Solutions Lead to Success

“Frontline helps us recruit the best teachers for the job and get the right people hired.”

It is still a challenge to fill all open positions, but Bob continues to look for new opportunities. Frontline Recruiting & Hiring is Bob’s #1 strategy for spreading the search far and wide. Another recruiting tactic Bob uses is to go out in person to look for top candidates without waiting for applicants to find them.

Liberty Hill ISD has found success with local job fairs they host in the spring, summer, and fall each year. Bob created a card with a QR code to hand out to potential applicants that takes them directly to the district’s webpage listing all current openings.

Social media is useful for promoting job fairs and current openings. Local universities like Texas State University and Texas A&M have been a source for great candidates. It’s not unusual for former Liberty Hill students to come full circle after they graduate from university and return to the district as teachers.

Recruitment stipends offered to incentivize engagement with especially hard-to-fill positions, as well as significant increases in the salary scale and benefits packages, have shown positive results.

Thanks to Bob’s coordinated and tech-enhanced efforts, most teaching positions are filled for this school year, although like in many areas of the country, support positions like paraprofessionals, custodians, and bus drivers require ongoing recruitment.

Saving Time Increases Productivity

“Using Frontline as a tool to streamline our processes has been more efficient.”

Confident that Frontline could do what he needed, by jumping in with both feet and exploring the capabilities of Recruiting & Hiring, Bob has become a master at using the system to create the forms he needs to hire top candidates. He has also learned to use Central more efficiently by creating procedures and forms not only for hiring and onboarding but also to streamline and simplify record-keeping for resignations and terminations. A new form for separation of employment collects data like dates, times, and locations worked, and provides valuable feedback about why an employee decided to leave the district.

After implementing Frontline Recruiting & Hiring, it didn’t take long for administrators and hiring managers to master the system. Bob takes advantage of free training offered by Frontline to learn about new features and system capabilities and helps to train other users in the district. There are often pleasant surprises, like the discovery that electronic contracts could easily be generated through Central.

“It has saved us some time. People know where to go to find what we have available. It’s been a good tool for us through the hiring process.”

The hiring process can be grueling and time-consuming, but Bob has found that with Frontline, administrators save time by reviewing notes left by other interviewers about a candidate and sorting the applicants based on specific criteria. “Say we’re going to hire an assistant principal. I can go through those applications and say ‘previous experience’ or ‘no experience’ or put some notes in there.”

That means there is no need to look at every application — only the ones that fit, which saves time for Liberty Hill ISD’s superintendent and assistant superintendent. Having multiple Frontline systems has been convenient in other ways too. A user can get into Recruiting & Hiring, Absence Management, or Central, all with the same login. Bob and his team use the time that they save to focus on improving processes and collaborating with other departments.

Bob said that other users at Liberty Hill also appreciate the system. “They would describe it as very useful and efficient.” When new principals arrive at the district, Bob gives them access to Frontline and shows them how to complete tasks like requisitioning a job posting or recommending a hire. “But I don’t really have to give them too much extensive training. That tells me it’s user-friendly.”

Impacting Students

Ultimately, the HR department exists to equip the district with staff in the service of education, and Frontline is a valuable tool in their toolkit. “It helps us recruit the best teachers for the job and screen their qualifications. So I think the biggest impact that we can have from the central office is helping and supporting, getting the right people hired.”