Academic Staff Recruitment

Contact: Academic Appointments and HR Officer Polly Bunce - polly.bunce@mpls.ox.ac.uk

If you cannot access any of the downloadable files on this page, please contact Polly Bunce.

Responsibility for recruitment of academic staff is shared between the division and departments. Certain categories of post are deemed to be divisional posts, most usually those which have a college association. These include statutory professorships and associate professorships (with and without tutorial fellowships).

The MPLS Associate Heads of Division meeting, sitting as MPLS Personnel Committee on behalf of Divisional Board, is responsible for giving Divisional endorsement for establishing such posts or to release vacant posts for refilling. Please see divisional Recruitment Protocol for guidance.

Once approved for filling/refilling, departments are responsible for liaising with the college to devise the job description and person specification, and for constituting the selection committee. These must then be approved by the division before the post may be advertised. In the case of statutory Professorships the University’s Senior Appointments Office also reviews recruitment material and there are additional stages of approval.

The Division’s Inclusive Recruitment guidelines (Word doc) detail good practice and suggestions for a successfully diverse recruitment exercise.

Information on AP-TF posts and differences in duties (Word doc)

College association (procedure for determining college associations) (Word doc)

Further guidance on Academic Recruitment from the central University

Recruitment for an Associate Professor

Please follow the Recruitment Protocol guidance for the vacancy to be approved for release by Personnel Committee.

Composition of selection committees

APTF-U / AP-NTF committee composition (7 members)

• 1 Chair (Head of Department or sub-Department – or their nominee)
• 3 members appointed by the department (if the post is an APTF – at least one of these members must be a tutorial fellow)
• 1 member external to the University (of appropriate seniority and subject area)
• 2 College appointees

One of the department’s subject specialist members should be designated as the Divisional rep. This can be the external member. Committees may contain more than one external member. Committee members from other Oxford departments who are working in a cognate field may also be very beneficial.
As a matter of good HR practice, subject specialist panellists are expected to be of at least equivalent seniority to that of the post being recruited.

Approval of the membership of the selection committee

The department should submit the proposed membership of the committee to the Academic HR Officer. The divisional office checks that the committee has the necessary breadth and depth of subject expertise, appropriate experience of college tutorial teaching, that it has been constituted with due regard to the University’s Joint Appointments Procedures, and to issues of gender balance.

The chair of the selection committee has a general role in ensuring that proper recruitment and personnel procedures are followed. All members of the committee have one vote in respect of all decisions taken by the committee throughout the recruitment process. The chairman is a member of the committee and has one vote, but no casting vote.

Job Description and Selection Criteria

In preparing the job description and selection criteria, the department needs to:

• draft the document using the templates below:

Job description: Associate Professorship with Tutorial Fellowship (Word doc)

Job description: Associate Professorship with Non-Tutorial Fellowship (Word doc)

• ensure that the draft includes information about the attractions of the college and college benefits, and as necessary sets out any separate college terms and conditions
• arrange for the draft to be discussed by the selection committee (including the college representatives);
• once a full draft is ready, obtain confirmation that the job description and selection criteria have been approved on behalf of the college;
• send the complete draft of the job description and selection criteria to the Academic HR Officer along with confirmation of the membership of the selection committee, if this has not already been approved.

The post may only be advertised once divisional approval of both job description and panel composition has been secured. Upon this final stage of approval to advertise, the Academic HR Officer will supply a divisional approval code and confirm the Vacancy ID and post number for the advertisement.

Advertisement, shortlisting, interviewing and appointing links

How and where to advertise

Staff Immigration Team website

The attention of all members must be drawn to the University’s Joint Appointments procedure and to Recruitment and Selection: Guide to the Appointment of Academic Staff.

N.B. If no women are shortlisted, the selection committee must submit a report to the MPLS Division (via the Academic Appointments HR Officer) to explain why this is, and to seek approval to proceed further with the recruitment process. The report should identify the women and other underrepresented groups who were considered strongest and indicate (with reference to the selection criteria) why they were not shortlisted, or it should state if, for instance, they have been approached but declined to apply.

Making a provisional offer

In MPLS, the selection committee chair, in consultation with the College (and the Head of Department, if they are not the chair), is responsible for discussing and agreeing a start date and determining the salary offer (for approval on behalf of the divisional board). This ensures that the approval for the appointment can encompass the specific financial and practical implications of the particular appointment. The First Choice Candidate Information form records these details and must be submitted to the division with the selection committee’s agreed report and its accompanying papers.

The chair must take every care to ensure that it is clear to the candidate that the selection committee does not make the final decision and that no offer of appointment will be valid until and unless the recommendation has been approved by the College Governing Body and the Division and formal contractual offers have been made. The chair should also, when applicable, make the candidate aware if approvals at University level will also be required (for Full professor title or overscale salary supplements), and that these processes may take some time, especially if the appointment has been made close to or after the end of a term.

Approval of the appointment

The following two items should be submitted to the academic appointments team together with the preferred candidate’s application materials including references:

First Choice Candidate Form (Word doc)

Selection Committee Report (Word doc)

The division will issue the contract once the appointment has been ratified.

Once the divisional office has received the selection committee report, the Divisional registrar normally approves straightforward cases on the Board’s behalf and the appointment is reported to the Board. It is in the Head of Division’s absolute discretion to refer this report to the General Purposes Committee of the Divisional Board or to the Board itself if she deems this necessary or advisable. The Divisional Registrar signs the university contract. The Head of Department and college are sent copies.

Preparing to recruit to a statutory professorship

When a statutory professorship is released for (re)filling, the Divisional Office will liaise with heads of department and with the Senior Appointments team centrally. Guidance for Departments on the processes for appointment to professorships are available from the Academic and Strategic HR Team Leader. Details of the proposed composition of the electoral board must be provided to the academic HR team as well as the Job Description and Advertisement. Please contact the Academic and Strategic HR Team Leader for templates and further guidance on the drafting of adverts and Job Descriptions for Professorships.

The University’s senior appointments team also reviews recruitment material. There are additional stages of approval before recruitment can begin, and recruitment is carried out centrally via the senior appointments team.

There is a Code of Conduct (Word doc) for Members of Electoral Boards.

Head of Department or Sub-Department

Heads of Department in MPLS are appointed from amongst senior research and academic staff in the department, and serve for a fixed term, which may be renewed.

Procedure for appointment of Head of Department (PDF)

Head of Department Duties and Responsibilities (PDF)

Conflict of Interest Policy

Please contact the academic HR office for more information on:

• Selection Committee composition
• Cases where 2 colleges are involved
• Further information on searches in AP recruitment

Further information

This page contains information on the processes for appointing academic staff and appointing heads of department. See information about processes for academic staff in post and about award of titles and merit pay. If you have a query about academic staffing that is not answered by the documents on these pages, please contact the Academic HR Team.