Active Recruitment for Tenure-Track Faculty Searches

The Active Recruitment Team, including OtP, HR, and DEI, are happy to announce modules in the UO Faculty Community Canvas site to help search committees and faculty learn how to follow the expected practices described below. The modules include brief videos and written materials for each step of your faculty search. Please email OtP@uoregon.edu for access.

Purpose

A core part of the Institutional Hiring Plan is a focus on UO’s long-term goal to increase the representation of women and underrepresented communities among the university’s tenured and tenure-track faculty, and to maximize the university’s ability to attract and recruit outstanding, highly competitive candidates overall. Active recruitment efforts focus on providing training and guidance for expected practices when discussing and selecting candidates and how to navigate challenging situations. This work is meant to be a partnership among many units on campus, working together to accomplish our goals.  Where specific processes have been mandated (e.g., the search plan template), these are targeted at the beginning of the search process to help ensure a successful launch of the search. Latter steps in the process will be primarily handled within the units, with the support of HR Recruitment Consultants and the Active Recruitment Team (ART).   

HR Recruitment Consultants & Active Recruitment Team | Process | Resources


HR Recruitment Consultants & Active Recruitment Team

Each search has been assigned an HR Recruitment Consultant. As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance active recruitment, please invite your HR recruitment consultant to participate in the first meeting as you begin to plan your job announcement and advertising/outreach plans for each search. Your consultant will be available to your search committee(s) throughout the search process.

HR recruitment consultants can assist search committees in the following ways:

  • Approving the committee’s Search Plan, in collaboration with the Executive Vice Provost or designee
  • Providing a search committee briefing for the chair and committee at the beginning of the search (upon request - recommended for searches that are not supported by search advocates)
  • Connecting search chairs and committees with key topic consultants of peer faculty across a range of search questions and issues
  • Providing demographic data of the full candidate pool to the chair and search committee prior to candidate review (upon request)
  • Offering advice and guidance to the search committee on strategies to broaden the pool of candidates
  • Working with the committee to flag if the applicant pool is not appropriately representative
  • Providing guidance and serving as a thought partner to the search committee during the review of candidates including the steps to evaluate candidates for phone or online interviews, invitations for campus visits, and final selection

The Active Recruitment Team is responsible for providing workshops and materials to support the search committees and HR Recruitment Consultants, as well as providing in-depth knowledge on key topics, such as best practices for inclusive applicant recruitment, implicit bias, diversity statements, constructive intervention techniques, interview planning, field availability estimates, search advocacy, and more.


Process

Search committees are expected to use the search practices outlined in Expected Practices for UO Tenure Track Faculty Searches. Specific required UO process elements are detailed below:

Develop and Follow a Search Plan

The development of a Search Plan is required before searches may be advertised. Search Plans are required to use the Search Plan Template. The HR Recruitment Consultant will review the Search Plan as part of the MyTrack search approval process, in consultation with ART members as needed. The Office of Human Resources and Institutional Research provided field availability data as part of the IHP proposal process; this data can be consulted again to help with the completion of Search Plans. For administrative/logistical details on launching a TTF search, see the HR Start a Search page.

Evaluate the Search Response

Before beginning applicant review, search committees are encouraged to work with their HR Recruitment Consultant to consider whether the applicant pool meets the goals from their Search Plan. It is ideal for this review and discussion to happen when there is still time to impact the number of applicants (e.g., mid-point during the active recruitment period or prior to a major conference), and again after the application deadline.

If the search committee and/or dean, after discussion with the Executive Vice Provost (EVP) or designee, determine that the pool is not sufficiently diverse, they have the option to discontinue the search. If a search is discontinued at this step, it will be expected to continue as part of the 2024 IHP (for search year 2024-25).

Evaluate Candidates

After the search committee and the dean agree that a search has a strong applicant pool, evaluation of candidates can begin. There are typically several parts to this process that are very discipline-specific. For example, some units rely heavily on conferences to help with initial reviews of candidates. Other units will conduct online interviews for upwards of twenty candidates. Units are highly encouraged to refer to the Expected Practices for UO Tenure Track Faculty Searches while evaluating candidates.

An important note about Veteran's Preference: any veteran candidate who meets minimum qualifications of the position must receive a first round interview (this can be a short screeing interview, as long as the same interview is provided to all candidates who are advancing to the first round of interviews). Veterans must also receive a 5% or 10% (for disabled veterans) preference at each stage of the search. If you have questions on how to apply this preference, reach out to your assigned recruitment consultant. You can also find more inforation on the Oregon Veteran's Preference in Employment informational webpage.

The dean is responsible for reviewing the short-list of candidates to ensure that they meet high standards, including identifying whether significant concerns exist with respect to pool/field availability data. At that time, the dean should ensure that any veterans who meet minimum qualifications are being flagged to receive the Veteran's Preference.

The HR Recruitment Consultants are available to the search chair during this stage to discuss how things are progressing, if there are any current challenges with the search, and whether any assistance, advice or guidance might be helpful. The ART will also be offering workshops in fall 2024 to provide additional tools and strategies to search committees to help assess candidates.

If a search committee member, department member, search advocate, or other party involved with the search feels that there has been bias or discrimination happening in the evaluation stage, they should contact Jenna Schuttpelz (Rakes), Director of Talent Acquisition and Classification and Compensation (jrakes@uoregon.edu), for advice and guidance.

Finalist Approval

At the finalist stage, Deans must receive finalist approval with all offer package details from the EVP before extending an offer. Before approving, the EVP may ask for a rationale explaining the recommendation. After finalist and salary approval, offers will proceed using the TTF Contingent Offer Letter Term Sheet process.

Process Review

The active recruitment process is regularly assessed for effectiveness, in the spirit of continuous improvement. If you have questions or suggestions for improvement, please contact Troy Elias at telias@uoregon.edu.


Resources

Workshops

Tenure Track Faculty Recruitment Workshops & Materials
The provost expects all searches to engage actively in the recruitment process. To this end, all searches must have robust search plans, and unit heads and search committee members are required to engage with materials and workshops, which will be updated throughout the year. Please check back periodically.

Implicit Bias Training
All search committee members must complete an implicit bias training in the three years prior to beginning candidate review. The Division of Equity and Inclusion has posted training opportunities on their website and recommend that search committees view trainings together, to discuss as a group.

Search Advocates

The Division of Equity and Inclusion/CoDaC has led the UO search advocate pilot program since its inception in February 2019. Search advocacy is a tool that supports our university’s efforts to enhance and diversify our faculty and staff applicant pools. See the Search Advocate Pilot Initiative webpage, for more information, including the role of a search advocate. If you are interested in becoming a search advocate or exploring whether a search process advocate would be helpful for your search, please contact Charlotte Moats-Gallagher at cmoatsga@uoregon.edu

Supporting Documents

Additional Resources

  1. The Gender Decoder is a publicly available free online tool that allows the authors of job advertisements to analyze their text and determine the extent to which gender-coded words may appear.  Despite its simplicity, the result gives the user a means to identify any unconscious/implicit bias in the wording of the advertisement, and make modifications to encourage a broader response.
  2. See sample job advertisements for contributions to diversity, equity, & inclusion.