Personnel & Professional Development Recruitment Essentials: Academic Appointments

1. Personnel & Professional DevelopmentRecruitment Essentials:Academic Appointments Leonie Isaacson, PPD, lbi20@cam.ac.uk Jessie Monck, PPD, jcm56@cam.ac.uk

2. Aims • To enable you to understand how to create the conditions where you can recruit the best candidate • To understand the importance of using a fair and transparent recruitment and selection process • To recognise the impact of implicit bias and ensure it does not affect selection decisions • To understand the sharedresponsibility of the selection committee to ensure a fair process is followed

3. Introductions • Name, role, department • What is the biggest recruitment mistake you’ve witnessed?

4. The importance of using a process

5. Professors – what is the reality? Cambridge: sex, ethnicity • 21.7% female (STEM18%) • 2-3% UK BME • 15% non-disclosure UK: sex, ethnicity, disability • 24.6% female • 6.7% UK BME • 63.8% UK white • 8.3% Non-UK BME • 21.1% Non-UK white • 95.9% non-disabled Equality in higher education: statistical report 2018Equality Challenge Unit

6. Equality Act 2010Protected Characteristics

7. Diversity in Recruitment • “Despite levels of explicit prejudice falling (Abrams and Houston 2006), actual discrimination remains a continuing problem for many sections of society. Understanding implicit bias (what causes it, how it impacts decision-making and what can be done to moderate it) is important if there is to be a narrowing of the gap between the ideals we aspire to and reality.” Equality Challenge Unit

8. First impressions… “Biases are the stories we make up about people before we know who they are.” Vernā Myers … and implicit bias

9. Gender bias in hiring in science faculties • Moss-Racusin (2012) A student’s CV application for a laboratory manager used 127 times. Randomly assigned female (64) or male (63) • Selectors: • Rated male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the female applicant • Chose a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant • The gender of the selector did not affect responses • Same shown in other research – non-academic posts, reference letters, assessment of written work, interviews, evaluations of teaching…

10. Mitigating impact of biases

11. Probation & ongoing management Planning & Preparation - Taking the guesswork out

12. Positive action • “We particularly welcome applications from women for this vacancy as they are currently under-represented at this level in our department.” • https://www.hr.admin.cam.ac.uk/recruitment/equality-law-and-recruitment/exceptions-equality-law/positive-action

13. References - an example “X has other achievements as listed on their CV. What perhaps does not come over is their delightful personality – cheerful, convivial, responsible, helpful and unpretentious….” A referencereceived in 2017 • Later “highly intelligent and determined”

14. Shared responsibility “What if….”

15. Best practice selection methods • Diverse and skilled selection committee, aware of impact of implicit bias • Questioning the skills and competencies outlined in the role profile/further information • Planned and consistent questioning – working to an interview plan • Selection exercises relevant to the skills and competencies required • Using a matrix system to score all applicants against objective measures • Accepted shared responsibility

16. Development Planning • Consider for yourself: • For your institution?