Searching for staff or academic jobs in Southern California colleges and universities is easy on the Southern California Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (SoCal HERC) employment Web site. SoCal HERC is an association of 29 educational institutions and research institutions whose purpose is to promote awareness of employment opportunities at member institutions. The SoCal HERC Web site is the first employment Web site of its kind in Southern California, offering one-stop shopping for people seeking a variety of careers in a college or university setting.

Instead of searching through 29 different campus Web sites to stay informed about job openings, job seekers have access to centralized information about faculty and staff positions at an assortment of campuses, including University of California campuses, California State University campuses, community colleges, and private colleges and universities (see links at right for examples of the different types of institutions included in SoCal HERC). Although its Web site is available to everyone, SoCal HERC specializes in helping spouses and partners of faculty and staff find jobs in Southern California, where dual incomes are often a necessity in order to afford the high cost of living. SoCal HERC has member institutions in the Central Coast, Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Orange County, and San Diego County areas.

SoCal HERC was founded in 2003 by the University of California, San Diego. It is a collaborative response to the many challenges colleges and universities face in the recruitment and retention of faculty and staff. Universal recruitment challenges such as shrinking budgets, increased competition, and dual-career considerations led to this collaboration among Southern California campuses, an enterprise rarely seen in higher education.

"This is an important and worthwhile effort," said Jennefer Collins, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel at the University of California, San Diego. "It ensures that our jobs are filled with the best candidates, which benefits our individual campuses, our students, and our communities."

SoCal HERC colleges and universities employ people with all levels of education in a wide range of fields besides faculty and research positions. Job seekers have free access to more than 1,900 jobs, with links to thousands of others. The SoCal HERC site offers several user-friendly features, including the "myJobs" feature, which matches applicant profiles and their job-search criteria with daily job postings; automatic e-Job alerts, which are customized job listings e-mailed to job seekers; and job searches by region, which show all of the area campuses and thus the potential jobs in a particular geographic area. The site also features a unique dual-career search function that enables job seekers to link their search criteria with those of a spouse or partner.

SoCal HERC member campuses benefit by sharing resources and information supporting recruitment and retention efforts and by utilization of the Web site to fill jobs. The SoCal HERC Web site receives more than 75,000 unique hits per month. Rosamaria Gomez-Amaro from Cal State Fullerton attests to the benefits of HERC membership. "We hired two new faculty who listed SoCalHERC as the recruitment source," she said, "and one staff person in the IT area."

For more information visit our Web site www.socalherc.org, or contact directors Jennifer Park at (858) 822-5862, jennifer@ucsd.edu or Becky Skov at (858) 534-2121, bskov@ucsd.edu.

To find out more about joining the SoCal HERC consortium and being featured on the Web site, contact director@socalherc.org.