Planning & Advertising

It is important to take the time for proper consultation within the Department/School to establish the advertisement and selection criteria that will attract a diverse and qualified applicant pool. Avoid advertising too broad or limited in scope as this will make it difficult to successfully recruit. Consider how the advertisement will be perceived by candidates, to ensure everyone feels encouraged to apply, in particular those from equity-deserving groups.

When you are ready to draft your job advertisement, start by asking the following questions to situate your task in relation to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI):

• How does this role’s purpose or function relate to equity, diversity, and inclusion? What opportunities exist for this role’s work and function to contribute to advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion within your unit and at UBC?
• How will EDI-related service and work be explicitly recognized and valued?
• Which equity-deserving groups are under-represented at this level or in this type of position within our unit or within UBC overall? What role could this job description play in beginning to change that?
• What opportunities exist within this job description to increase the diversity of candidates applying for this position? How can I make the job description – and the position itself – as affirming, clear, open, and EDI-related as possible?
• For positions that involve leadership or supervision, what opportunities are there to emphasize core leadership attributes, including diverse and inclusive leadership?

Use templates below to draft your job advertisement.

• For research-stream positions, please use Job Advertisement Template – Research (Feb 2024)
• For educational leadership stream positions, please use Job Advertisement Template – Educational Leadership (Feb 2024)

Review the instructions on the  FoM Recruitment Planner (Feb 2024) and complete the Recruitment Rationale, Financial Plan, and Space Plan tabs as follow:

1. Recruitment Rationale (Tab 1 of Recruitment Planner): Outline the recruitment rationale, advertising strategy, and the equity, diversity, and inclusion plan for this recruitment.
2. Financial Plan (Tab 2 of Recruitment Planner): A Financial Plan along with any guaranteed funding letters/ funding commitment agreements must be reviewed and validated by Finance prior to submitting the Recruitment Planner and advertising package to FoM Faculty HR. Please ensure all the necessary funding is filled out and validated by the appropriate Finance Director/Senior Director.
   • Please note that all commitments from external agencies (including language around 12 months’ notice of termination of funding) should be detailed out by a Guarantee Funding Letter/ Agreement (Template) and signed by the appropriate representative from the external agency.
3. Space Plan (Tab 3 of Recruitment Planner): Ensure the Academic Space Allocation Request is completed in advance and the reference number is obtained prior to submitting the Recruitment Planner to FoM Faculty HR. The Space Planning Unit will confirm their approval via email to the Departments/Schools and FoM Faculty HR. Departments are responsible for submitting a new request if the space allocations change during the recruitment process.

Please send the following documents as a package to Assistant Managers, Faculty HR by portfolio for review and approval.

• FoM Recruitment Planner (all tabs to be filled out)
• Draft Job Advertisement
• Guarantee Funding Letters/Agreements (if applicable)
• Finance Validation from the Director, Academic Finance

The Dean’s Office will provide authorization for you to create this position in Workday for further approvals including Faculty Relations and the Provost.

When you are ready to create a position in Workday, initiate Create Position BP (Job Aid can be found here) and enter the final version of the approved job advertisement in the Job Description section.

In the Create Position BP, please make note of the following:

• If a position is a tenured or tenure track position, select full-time and ongoing (no end date is necessary).
• If a position is a grant-tenured or grant tenure track position, the end date should align with the end date of the external grant. Please review the funding commitment letters to determine the appropriate end date. There may be instances where the end date is difficult to determine. If this is the case, please feel free to contact us if in doubt.
• If a position is at the rank of either of two ranks (e.g. Associate Professor with tenure or Professor with tenure), indicate the higher rank in Job Profile and both titles in the Job Posting Title.
• The position MUST be approved by the Provost Office (Central) in the workflow before you can proceed with posting the advertisement externally.

After the position has been created in Workday, you can post the position via Create Job Requisition and Post Job BPs (Job Aid can be found here).  Please provide the Assistant Managers by their portfolio with the Position Number and Job Requisition ID once it has been approved in Workday.

After completing the above steps, you are now ready to post your ad on external websites.

Per UBC Policy HR11 (Employment Advertising Policy), all tenure-stream positions must be advertised as widely as possible for at least one-month, at a minimum of four places on appropriate websites as follows:

• on the UBC Careers (Workday)
• in at least two (2) appropriate publications (print or electronic) with a wide, national readership (e.g. “CAUT Bulletin”, “University Affairs”); and
• in at least one (1) other venue, journal or publication (print or electronic) relevant to the discipline (e.g. “Nature Careers”).

Recommended advertising sites to broaden your search:

• Department and affiliated institution’s websites.
• Make use of the advertising feature on the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (G+PS) website, which provides access to a number of posting sites (e.g. EurAxess) without cost to the unit.
• Job sites related to medicine disciplines, like Canadian Medical Association Journal, ProfessorPositions, and Medicinoxy.
• Utilize UBC Equity & Inclusion Office’s database with posting locations that specifically serve scholars from equity seeking groups and are not the traditional sites of advertisement for searches (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Os2JRKsQ8HYhedttgt8-is0X3RD1NDNx0Ks2L2HYtSg/edit#gid=0).
• Linkedin – UBC’s HR department has five job slots available on a first-come, first-served basis that are open to all UBC departments wishing to post an advertisement on LinkedIn. Email sf.recruitment@ubc.ca to book your advertisement.

Meeting Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Advertising Requirements: Please take a screenshot of the job posting on the day it was posted and take a screenshot of the job posting on the day it was closed at each posting location. Ensure that the date is clearly visible in the screenshot for record keeping purposes.

Non-advertising strategies to create a diverse applicant pool:

• Collaborate with diversity-focused organizations and associations, such as those supporting women, racial or ethnic minorities, or LGBTQ+ individuals, to tap into their networks and reach potential candidates.
• Partner with educational institutes with high graduation rate for historically, persistently, and systematically marginalized groups to create pipelines for diverse talent.
• Reach out to relevant programs nationally and/or internationally to invite applications from graduates. 
• Build relationships with universities and departments that have disproportionately high ration of highly marginalized groups and participate in their campus events to engage with potential candidates.
• Maintain professional networks and make note of potential candidates to keep in mind for future openings when attending professional conferences or community engagements.
• Ask colleagues to reach out to individuals at other institutions to recommend suitable candidates or to share the advertisement through their network.