New AAU rules, better job planning, and a new recruitment system

On August 21, the executive management approved HR’s proposal to amend AAU rules, and additionally, the executive management agreed to a proposal for better job planning.

The changes mean that the university has significantly better conditions for working quickly when recruiting new Academic Staff members (VIP). This meets the organisation’s desire for a more flexible and efficient recruitment process, and it also allows for faster conversion of funds into appointments.

With the changes in the rules, we can reduce the time of a postdoc appointment by half from about 13 weeks to around 6 weeks. This is from the time the position is published until the job interviews are held. It can go even faster if, for example, the shortlisting and assessment work and the job interviews are conducted faster than the instructed deadlines. Similarly, it can go significantly faster for other academic positions.

The executive management has also approved that the HR partners are more involved in the strategic job planning of the departments to support a quick and smooth recruitment process and at the same time meet the challenges of converting the increasing research funds into employment.

New recruitment system is on its way
HR has, in collaboration with IT Services (ITS), worked purposefully towards introducing a new recruitment system after now that the current supplier is taking the PeopleXS system off the market.

The aim has been to find a new system that effectively and user-friendly supports the new recruitment process effectively and user-friendly with a focus on standardiszation and simplification of workflows.

The winner of the tender is the Swedish supplier Grade Varbi, which has several Nordic universities as customers, including Lund University, Stockholm University, and the Aarhus School of Architecture. Grade Varbi has distinguished itself with high user-friendliness, good understanding of processes in a university context, and good customer references.

Next steps
HR and ITS expect that AAU can start using the new recruitment system at the beginning of the second quarter of 2025 – at a time that best fits the organiszation’s workload.

Relevant parties in the organisation will be informed of and involved in the process leading up to the implementation of the new system.