Page 123 - VFWD -DOACotB - AMB 03 01 19

Dennis Hawkins

Tuesday, February 19, 2019 2:03 PM

Vallejo Flood & Wastewater District
Director of Administration / Clerk of the Board
Phone Screen Questions

General Questions
1. Why are you interested in the DOA opportunity with Vallejo Flood & Wastewater? Why are you
actively or passively looking for a new position?

It's more passively. I know this isn't the how to prepare for an interview question. One of the things
that attracted me, is my wife and I have been talking about relocating to the North Bay. Just want to
get closer to family. I have been doing administrative work for my whole career, and that's another
thing that attracted me, is it sounds like the duties and responsibilities are similar to those of being a
city clerk, so it gives me an opportunity to get back into that part of the profession.
Position Specific Questions

2. Please describe your highest level administrative support role to an Executive, Director, General
Manager and/or Board.

My highest level is City Clerk for the City of San Jose. Prior to that I was the assistant City Clerk for a
number of years. I have worked with the City Manager, City Attorney, and with elected officials. I was
an elected official for a number of years. I was a school board member. I always tried to bear that in
mind and help them in decisions as much as I can. If we have a new member coming on board I would
give a little more background than the memo I gave to existing members, so that they were able to get
up to speed quicker. I tried to anticipate questions prior to them having to ask. I would say as a City
Clerk, handling a number of different things, being the filing officer for the form 700, so there are a
number of things I have done in my pas that I think are transferrable to this position.
3. Please describe your supervisory experience and the most challenging human resources issue you
have addressed.

I have been a manager/supervisor since 1999. I have dealt with various different types of employees
like attorneys, I've been involved in recruitments, most of the staff I have supervised have been clerical,
administrative, and analytical staff. When I worked for the City of San Jose I was the manager for the
streets and traffic department. The blue collar types of employees that I imagine the District has as
well. All of those have been in unionized environments, which sometimes makes things more
complicated.

I think that there are two examples that have been challenging. One is that when I was in the fire
department, our HR department had not come up with a modern way to test recruits. I was able to
persuade the CM's office to give us a $100,000 where we created an online testing system, we had a
new model where we did the background questionnaire. We attracted the most highly qualified people
by using certain criteria, if people had a paramedic criteria they went to the top of the test list. We had
a number of criteria to narrow down the applicant pool. I was able to test and design a testing process
to fit within the timeframe and parameters we were giving.