Portland General Electric is also a recognized leader for its corporate culture and workplace; it was named as one of Oregon’s best 100 companies to work for by Oregon Business Magazine. Emphasizing diversity, teamwork, education, family, and volunteerism, PGE is more than just a place to work – it’s an established, integral part of the community where its 2,500+ employees live. It’s not surprising that for each ten positions posted, they receive 500 applications. Three recruiters work with two hundred and fifty hiring managers to hire the most qualified people to fill the positions.

Portland General Electric originally implemented the Windows-based Greentree Employment System in 1996. This early version allowed HR to track applicants. The Internet-based version of Greentree Systems’ software – iGreentree – has provided far more benefits to HR, the company, and to applicants.

PGE uses iGreentree extensively, and has realized time savings in each step of the process, beginning when a hiring manager initiates a job requisition. With iGreentree the time-to-post process has been reduced from more than a week down to one-to-two days.

Once the job requisition is approved, it is posted on the company Intranet or the Internet, or both. The job’s requirements and the hiring manager determine whether the job is posted internally only, or whether it is posted both internally and externally.

Ninety percent of the applicants for a job posting submit their applications online. A walk-in applicant can use a PC in the HR office to apply online, or if preferred, can fill out a paper application. HR manually enters the paper applications into the system, making them part of the candidate database.

Hiring managers have immediate and near real-time access to candidates applying for their posted jobs and they can review applications even before the job closes. "Having a pool of candidates lined up to interview shortens the time to fill, which makes us more efficient and better able to serve our customers," said Colletto.

Most of the benefits to PGE are in speed and efficiencies. The significant areas in which iGreentree has shortened the process time include the online application process, the faster response time to applicants, and the easy, fast routing of applications to hiring managers. Because all of the information pertaining to either a job or an applicant is in one database, it’s easy to locate and gather information for reporting purposes. The reports include Affirmative Action, Applicant Requisition Activity List, the Bid Award list, and the External Jobline, which is sent out weekly.

PGE knows that their customers have high expectations that they strive to meet or exceed. And so they, in turn, appreciate and value vendors who meet and exceed their expectations.

During the iGreentree implementation, PGE took the opportunity to revisit their existing processes and made the few ‘tweaks’ that suited them. The Greentree Systems consultants then customized iGreentree to the PGE processes. "Working with Greentree Systems was a pleasure," said Colletto. "Every person at Greentree made the experience both enjoyable and easy. They are always there to answer questions, they get back to us in a timely manner, and they bent over backwards to design the reports we needed."

PGE is a ‘hosted’ customer, using the Greentree servers to run the system. As part of the hosting service, Greentree provides support, updates, database backups, and quick problem resolution.

Colletto attends the annual Greentree User Conference. "The user conference is a great opportunity to learn about the new features so that we can start planning early. It’s also a great forum to see how other users are using the product, what features they utilize most, and just engage in a ‘think tank’ session with colleagues from other companies and industries. It’s definitely a value-add to having Greentree as a vendor."

Click here to view job openings at Portland General Electric.

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