Cindy Patterson, CTO Mentor Candidate

 

The Personnel Seminar was co-presented by Sue Wieser, Associate Superintendent of Human Resources and Lorrie Owens, Administrator of Information Technology Services; both from the San Mateo County Office of Education. They began by emphasizing the impact that human resource cost has to a school districts budget.  The next segment focused on the difference between a leader and a manager and the need for interpersonal skills.  The class considered the different management styles with an emphasis on understanding your management style and leveraging it for best results.

 

Peter Senge’s theory of learning organizations and the five disciplines of the learning organization were presented followed by a discussion of management concepts and management ethics.  The importance of ethics was demonstrated with a class exercise featuring ethical constructs to discuss.  Hiring was emphasized with a presentation followed by a group activity about ideal qualities for new hires.  Job descriptions were discussed followed by a review of network engineer job descriptions as a group exercise.  More aspects of hiring were also discussed including evaluating applications, paper screening processes, red flags on resumes, the interview process, and reference checking.  The impact of social media in a hiring context was also included.

 

Managing employees includes the onboarding process, managing performance, providing smart goals, and evaluations.  Lorrie and Sue covered each of these subjects with lecture and some role playing exercises.  The final part of the day covered progressive discipline using the FRISK model.  Through the entire day there was an emphasis on the partnership between the hiring manager and Human Resources and the importance to check with HR before taking action.