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[Session] Challenges and Experiences in Hiring RSEs #18

@dokempf

Description

@dokempf

Organizers

Dominic Kempf, Scientific Software Center, Heidelberg University, @dokempf
Joerg Schaarschmidt, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, @schaarj
Jasmin Hörter, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, @JasminHoerter
Robert Speck, Jülich Supercomputing Centre, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, @pancetta
Greta Richter, Niedersächsische Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Georg August Universität Göttingen

Session Description

More and more academic institutions are hiring dedicated RSE staff. However, the established procedures for hiring other academic staff might not be well suited to attract the best RSE staff. In this session, we try to exchange expertise around hiring RSEs: Publishing job advertisements, managing job interviews, overcoming administrative hurdles, designing career paths and RSE onboarding. We are primarily addressing participants that have their own experiences or challenges with hiring, but everybody else is welcome as well. We also explicitly welcome participants that can contribute experiences from the employee perspective.

Session Format

We want to host this as a 2x90 minutes session: The first session is organized as a World Cafe with five subtopics: Job advertisement, Interview processes, Administrative aspects of hiring, Career development, Onboarding. The group is split and circulates boards for discussing this topic based on key questions prepared by the board moderator. There will be roughly 15 minutes per group per board. The second session will start with presentations of the five moderators and then continue with general discussion. It is entirely possible for participants to attend only one of the sessions.

Tangible Outputs

We are planning to distill a document from the discussion outcomes. We aim for a blog post or similar, but given the momentum of the group, we might also decide to make it a larger publication.

Session Duration

180 minutes (2x90 minutes)

Required equipment/infrastructure/support

Five or six presentation boards and moderation materials (paper, markers, pins/magnets etc.).

Scheduling Constraints

Thursday or Friday preferred due to likely late arrival by a co-organizer. Potential conflict with other co-organized sessions.

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