County staff recommend Neogov to replace failing applicant-tracking system; board asks for broader, holistic review

King George County Human Resources briefed the Board of Supervisors on May 6 about problems with its current applicant-tracking and onboarding software and recommended NEOGOV as a replacement for recruitment and onboarding tasks.

Lede: Human Resources reported repeated failures and significant staff workarounds with the county’s current hiring platform and proposed switching to NEOGOV for recruitment and onboarding; board members asked staff to scope a broader, countywide human-resources and learning-management solution before final procurement.

Nut graf: HR said the current system (Criterion, which replaced CivicHR) creates barriers for applicants, does not render fillable federal forms correctly, is not mobile-optimized and requires extensive manual staff work. HR’s competitive analysis favored NEOGOV for public-sector recruitment reach, applicant management and onboarding; cost estimates presented for recruitment+onboarding were roughly $25,000 per year plus modest implementation fees, while staff noted that an expanded full-suite implementation could approach six figures annually.

What HR reported: Susan Courtney (HR) said staff spent roughly 150 collective hours developing workarounds in the existing Criterion system, and that the product has prevented some applicants from completing applications and hindered hiring managers. Courtney said the county’s prior vendor (CivicHR) had been sunsetted and that migration to Criterion has underperformed. Vinny Van Aaker, NEOGOV representative, presented NEOGOV features: broad job-board exposure via governmentjobs.com, automatic screening and ranking, onboarding modules (digital new-hire forms and checklists), and a learning-management component with public-sector training libraries.

Costs and procurement path: HR reported current annual spending on the existing HR platform (contract renewal April 2026) at $66,817.76 (per staff reporting in the session). NEOGOV phase-1 estimates for recruitment and onboarding were presented at about $25,000 per year with a roughly $3,300–$3,900 implementation cost for the recruitment and onboarding modules; staff also warned that a full enterprise rollout (time & attendance, benefits integration, learning management and advanced analytics) could carry substantially higher subscription costs (staff cited a possible scenario up to approximately $150,000/year depending on modules and services).

Board direction: Supervisors asked staff to develop a comprehensive requirements list (including benefits, payroll/time, LMS and operations reporting) and to return with a comparison and implementation plan; County Administrator Smolnick agreed to coordinate follow-up vendor meetings and a more complete, holistic procurement plan.

Ending: HR will return with a requirements document and a procurement path. The board did not authorize immediate purchasing that night; it asked staff to gather firm price proposals and to consider total cost of ownership and support response times when evaluating vendors.