Recruitment processes are one of the most important issues at the university. Naturally, this applies to all categories of staff. We want the best professors, lecturers, doctoral students and administrative staff. The recruitment of people in all of these categories is preceded by review processes of varying nature.
Teacher recruitment at our university involves extremely rigorous processes. The requirement profiles used in our job vacancy postings are reviewed and decided by the faculty boards. Experts are always used, both for recruitment and promotion, and decisions on whom to appoint as experts are made by the dean. The academic appointments boards then play the crucial role of considering the opinions of the experts and the results of interviews and test lecturers in order to make a proposal as to who should be appointed.
The importance of the experts’ work during the preparation of appointments must be stressed here. The experts must read the evidence of scientific qualification, i.e. books and articles, as well as all evidence of teaching qualification to be able to give their opinion and recommendation to the academic appointments board. These two areas must be given equal weight in the experts’ assessment, but the weighting may vary depending on the type of position concerned. An important duty of not only the university but also us in our role as experts is to ensure that the consideration involves a qualitative assessment of the evidence rather than quantification of listed qualifications. All faculties are constantly striving to improve this work.
This is a text written by Yvonne Svanström, Deputy Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, under the subject line “Words from the University’s Senior Management Team”, where different members of the management take turns writing about current issues. “Words from the University’s Senior Management Team” is included in each issue of “News for Staff”, a newsletter that is sent to all university employees.