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E-Recruitment
Ministry Of Civil Service
Oman

The Problem

Ministry of Civil Service (MoCS) is responsible for recruiting Omani job seekers for the 38 units (Ministries and Government Organisations) under the Civil Service Law. MoCS received different requirements for recruitment from these units through the Human Resources Management System. Traditionally, once these requirements were received, MoCS will place advertisements in the local newspaper. This was done at least 3 times a year to notify job seekers of available vacancies.

The response to these job advertisements is usually overwhelming. MoCS used to get more than 20,000 applicants per advertisement. Subsequently, applicants were required to submit their applications and CV’s by hand to the recruitment department situated in Muscat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman. This would mean that the applicant would have to travel from the various regions to the capital city. The Sultanate of Oman has a total land area of about 309,000 square km and is divided into 8 administrative regions. This would mean that an application from the Dhofar region in south would have to travel more than 1000 km to Muscat in north to submit their applications. This caused a lot of inconvenience for the applicants as they will have to travel from far off places, queue and wait for a long time to submit their applications and get approval from MoCS Recruitment department. The rush to submit their applications on time would turn the Recruitment department into a frenzy especially on the closing date of the application. Morale of the department staff were badly affected when they had to work long hours just to accept, endorse and process the applications.

In addition, after submitting the applications, all applicants would have to take a paper-based written qualification examination. It took a long time to grade the score, pre-qualify the candidates and select them for formal interviews. The candidates who cleared the written exam would then be called for an interview which was also manually documented. The whole recruitment process takes 6 months from start to end on average and sometimes it could take up to 12 months.

MoCS in our endeavors to embrace the eGovernment saw that improvement must be made to the recruitment process so as to benefit the applicants (job-seekers), the recruiting units and the Recruitment Department of the Ministry.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
Based on the problems faced in the traditional recruitment process, the MoCS introduced a new system of recruitment which used the Short Message Service of the mobile phone. In the Sultanate of Oman, the mobile penetration rate is about 120% and it is the most successful form of communication today given the vast area of the country.

In August 2007, the new recruitment system using SMS was introduced. Job seekers can apply for jobs in the Civil Service by sending an SMS with their Manpower Registration Number and the corresponding job identification number published in the advertisements. Through integration with the Ministry of Manpower, National Manpower System, the system validates the applicants’ data in seconds. The job seekers can apply for jobs in the Civil Service anytime, anyway, eliminating the need to travel to the capital just to submit the applications and sit for the entrance examinations.

Applicants then go through a computer based examination to test their aptitude and knowledge at designed regional centres nearest their home. The examination system contains a database of more than 9000 questions in different fields with different levels. All questions are in multiple choices format. The applicants will be given 35 random questions to be completed in 35 minutes. The test is graded by the computer-based system and the individual score is given directly to the applicant immediately after the exam. The best candidate will be notified and channelled to the interview on the same day.

An integrated interview system is then used to record interview evaluations by 2 members (one from Ministry of Civil Service and one from Unit requesting the job). Candidates will be able to know if they are nominated after the interview. The Hiring Unit will be notified of the nominated candidate through the Human Resources Management System.

From an initial 6 months or 24 weeks time frame, the whole process is shortened to less than a week, from notification to nomination. This is a huge saving of 23 weeks plus the eradication of having to travel, queue for approval and anxiety in waiting for examination results.



Apart from time savings, the frenzy during each recruitment exercises is totally eliminated and now HR Departments in the respective units and in MoCS can focus on quality manpower planning and management.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The solution were proposed by Ministry of Civil Service Recruitment Department and IT department. This is part of their strategy to computerise their internal processes to improve the efficiency of the Ministry.

The SMS solutions were developed by a local company. The examination and interview systems were developed internally by MoCS IT Department. The integration of the solutions is monitored and project managed by MoCS IT Department. We received a lot of assistance and support from Ministry of Manpower who provided the solution integration to the National Manpower Management System. This is essential the system contains national job seekers information. Through such collaborative efforts, we are able to simplify our recruitment processes.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Having understood the main problems and identified the viable solution, MoCS began working with the various stakeholders to first streamline the recruitment process. The objective here is to understand the whole recruitment process so as to identify the areas that caused bottleneck and seek solutions to eradicate them.

MoCS IT Department set out the project specifications having done the detailed analysis of the recruitment processes. The Recruitment module is developed as an extension of the Human Resource Management System which was implemented since 2003. We adopted a phase approach in implementing the Recruitment Module as it involved the actual recruitment process, the examination and the format interviews.

For the recruitment process, MoCS piloted the SMS technology in the first phase in 2007 to ascertain its effectiveness. In the first phase, SMS was offered as an option for applicant who wish to use it but with an option to also apply manually. We received overwhelming support for the first phase. In the next phase of implementation in 2008, SMS becomes the main avenue for all applications. Subsequently, the Examination and Interview systems were successfully tested and implemented in 2008.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Phase 1- In 2007, MoCS carried out the following key activities;

a. gathered users’ requirement and worked with various stakeholders to streamline the recruitment processes.
b. worked with Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education teachers and lecturers to develop 9000 multiple choice questions for the examination bank
c. worked with Ministry of Manpower to integrate the Recruitment System with the National Manpower System
d. developed the Recruitment Module as an extension of the Human Resource Management System
e. developed the examination and the interview modules
f. worked with a local company to test the SMS application solution
g. piloted the SMS application process for one of the recruitment exercises


Phase 2 - In 2008, the IT Department revised and updated the Recruitment System based on the lessons learned from the pilot test in Phase 1. MoCS began deploying the system nationwide including the examination module and the interview module.

With the successful implementation by end 2008, MoCS was able to eradicate the real problem of long waiting time for civil service job application. This is greatly welcome by the applicants and the recruiting units. In addition, the elimination of tedious paperwork and the long time taken to grade 20,000 examination papers were also well received by the 38 organisations supported by the MoCS. They can now spend quality time to select the most suitable applicants for the job.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
In the initial phase of deployment, MoCS team faced some problems with manpower applicants’ data, which are used to validate and match the job requirements. They started to validate the data manually but it was still taking too much time. The problem was solved in a meeting between MoCS and the Ministry of Manpower. Basically, the solution was to fix the data fields and validate any new entries. Other than that MoCS did not face any other major obstacles as all stakeholders and users are greatly relieved with the implementation of the new ways of applying and processing of jobs in the civil service.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Most of the systems were developed by internal resources (MoCS IT department and recruitment department). For the examination database, MoCS contracted University lecturers and Ministry of Education teachers to prepare the questions bank and they were paid based on number of questions. The systems were implemented using the local resources. By sharing revenue with vendor and mobile companies, the cost was also kept to very minimum.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The Recruitment System using SMS technology is another example of government agencies embracing Information technology to improve their services to the customers (jobseekers and the other 38 organisations). MoCS continues to strive to provide services to these customers effectively and efficiently.

From an initial 6 months or 24 weeks time frame, the whole recruitment process is shortened to less than a week, from notification to nomination. This is a huge saving of 23 weeks plus the eradication of having to travel, queue for approval and anxiety in waiting for examination results. It saved effort for applicants who used to come to the ministry to apply for jobs. Moreover, the system eradicated the need to manually mark 20,000 examination scripts and the manual ways of processing interviews.

The solution also created confidence and transparency between MoCS and citizens. This solution is transferable and can be used by any organisation who may wish to use it in their recruitment procedure. The organisation can create their own questions bank and specify interview criteria in this solution.

Since it is developed inhouse by the MoCS IT Department based on Oracle, the system is easily sustainable and upgradeable when the new requirements arise.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
There many lessons that we learned, some of them are:
- Using single source of data saves time and effort spent in entering the data
- Using the mobile technology to deliver services is very well received as nearly everyone has a mobile phone but not everyone has a computer and internet connection.
- Transparency creates a confidence between service providers and clients.
- Synergistic working relationships with other Ministries and Government Organisations for more integrated eGovernment Services

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry Of Civil Service
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Aimen Alhosni
Title:   DG of Information and Statistics  
Telephone/ Fax:   +(968)24607393
Institution's / Project's Website:   +(968)24692459
E-mail:   aimen@mocs.gov.om  
Address:  
Postal Code:  
City:  
State/Province:  
Country:   Oman

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