More than 70 resumes have been received over the past month for Laurinburg’s city manager position.
“They have come from just about everywhere,” said Laurinburg Human Resources Director Amy Martin.
Martin is organizing the initial selection for presentation to the Laurinburg City Council and will assist the board with the hiring process.
All decisions about the hire will be made by the council. Martin will only make recommendations about the strength of the resumes and sort them accordingly.
“I actually won’t disqualify anybody at all. My role is to present everything to the (city council),” Martin said.
Upon completion of her initial review of the resumes this week she said that her preliminary opinion is that there is a strong group of interested parties – at least on paper.
The next step in the process will be to ask the council at a meeting later this month if they believe the call for resumes should go out again. The city stopped advertising the position on Jan. 31.
“(The city council) will have to decide if they are comfortable moving forward with these (resumes) or if they want to open it up again,” Martin said.
According to Martin, roughly 40 percent of the 72 resumes received through the end of last month were from individuals located in the Carolinas.
Martin said that the strongest referrer of domestic talent has been the North Carolina League of Municiplaties’ job advertising service.
“For the rest of the country we primarily advertised on websites like LinkedIn,” said Martin, who admitted that she did receive a few off-the-wall resumes from non-serious or unqualified candidates by advertising on the Internet.
But she also credited the decision to advertise the job online for the broad and diverse group of respondents.
A timetable has not yet been set for the hire and currently the city council has decided to wait to fill the chief of police and fire chief positions, which are also open until a city manager is hired.
“That could change, however,” Martin said.
Martin said she was not ready to discuss the diversity of the respondent pool.
“That data is there, but we will not compile it until after the process is completed,” she said.
Following former City Manager Ed Burchins’ decision to resign in December, Martin said that she would advertise the job on diversity websites.
Those websites have led to a number of expressions of interest, according to Martin.
Harold Haywood is currently operating as interim city manager.
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