The new recruitment strategy - focusing on tomorrow's prerequisites
A lot is happening around faculty renewal and the recruitment process at EECS. After introducing the Recruitment Committee and an internship with the school management and the Faculty Board, it is time to gather aspirations and look ahead.
Henrik Artman - Faculty Renewal Officer, School Management
Why is faculty renewal necessary for EECS, and what does the school management want to achieve with this work?
Renewal is always exciting and vital. Neither research nor teaching can stagnate in a rapidly changing world. Retaining talent and people willing to take responsibility for the school's success is also essential. We all want recruitment to be well embedded in our organisation, to be faster than it has been in the past, and to find the best possible candidates.
The School Management and the Faculty Board recently held a retreat to discuss recruitment strategy. What was the purpose of the retreat, and why is it essential to discuss recruitment strategy together?
The purpose of the retreat was to unify our perspectives on both process and long-term needs. The Faculty Board, and by extension, the Recruitment Committee, will play a crucial role in faculty recruitment as they decide and prepare the basis for decisions. In the long run, we want to create a suitable dimension of our faculty that matches the needs of society and industry.
How is this work linked to the ongoing initiative for new assistant professor positions?
We used the proposals from the departments to discuss whether the submissions were adequate and reasonable and what the Faculty Board should consider. We did not make any judgements on the content or strategic importance of the different proposals. That is a job for later. However, seeing that many departments have done good and serious preparatory work is exciting. This bodes well!
Ingo Sander - EECS Faculty Board
What were the main issues discussed during the retreat?
The school needs a long-term strategy for faculty development to ensure a promising long-term faculty composition to respond to teaching and research needs. The retreat brought together the Faculty Board and the School management to have a standard view and work towards a common strategy and processes for long-term and sustainable faculty renewal.
Have any insights or decisions emerged that will influence the recruitment strategy in the future?
New faculty members are usually recruited at EECS at the level of associate professors. Successful recruitment means that the associate professor stays at KTH for more than 30 years and ends their career as a professor. A well-balanced faculty composition is essential to meet KTH's teaching needs at all levels and respond to society's needs for emerging research challenges. In KTH's new delegation scheme, the Faculty Board is responsible for faculty renewal and development.
What are the following steps to strengthen the faculty in the long term?
The Faculty Board is tasked with 'ensuring appropriate processes within the school for the recruitment and promotion of teachers and the appointment of researchers' and 'participating in the preparation of the School's Faculty Renewal Plan'. A complicating factor is that the essential funding from the state for KTH's Faculty is relatively low and will likely not increase if KTH creates more faculty positions.
Kristina Höök - Vice Chair of the Recruitment Committee, member of the Faculty Board
How does the recruitment process work at EECS - from need to appointment?
The Faculty Board is a new instance, and we need to define how to work our responsibilities and ensure that the faculty develops positively and sustainably. To do this, we have required access to both facts and a deeper understanding of how EECS, industry, society, funders and policy decisions affect us.
Some key questions we have needed to answer are:
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How large can EECS be without the proportion of faculty funding per researcher becoming unsustainably low?
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What is the age and gender distribution at EECS?
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What parts of EECS work well, and where are the challenges?
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What subjects do we teach and research? What is missing for the future?
Without this understanding, we can neither approve nor, in good conscience, stop service proposals from a division. Fortunately, EECS school leadership has already begun developing data to help us understand the school's needs and the room for manoeuvre.
At our retreat, we painted scenarios based on what we see in the organisation:
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Large teaching responsibilities in key school areas but limited research
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Dependence on a single external funder, making the organisation vulnerable
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Elderly professors running a large and vital organisation for KTH, but without identified successors
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A strategically important area where EECS/KTH lacks sufficient faculty
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An area with a high industrial need for engineers but which is not at the forefront of research and lacks external funding
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Areas with an uneven gender balance, where it is difficult to identify strong candidates of the under-represented gender
The EECS School's recruitment strategies and processes must reflect these challenges and needs. We aim to ensure long-term, sustainable, strategically orientated faculty development that strengthens research and education.
The new assistant professor positions are part of a strategic initiative. How do we ensure that we reach the right candidates?
We have learnt from good examples that it is about actively seeking out post-docs we see as having potential when we meet them at conferences and in other contexts. Senior researchers must take an active role in encouraging qualified candidates of the under-represented gender to apply.
What is the role of the Employment Committee in recruitment, and why is it essential that more people get involved in this work?
The faculty must take joint responsibility for our school. We must not get into financial difficulties - that goes without saying - but we must not get into a situation where we do not develop either. We compete in a global market and want to offer first-class programmes, pioneering and exciting research, and create the conditions for sustainable development in industry, society and the people who will live with the technology we have made.
For the Faculty Board to make wise decisions, solid data is required. The Employment Committee is an arena where we can work together to keep our ear to the ground and help create the best possible basis for wise decisions.