Quality assurance in appointment processes

Binding and structured processes in approval and selection procedures in cooperation with central and departmental facilities and expertise ensure professional, transparent and efficient procedures.

The appointment regulations govern appointment processes as specified in statutory provisions and internal LUH regulations. The appointment regulations are legally binding. Moreover, the appointment management department provides extensive information and documents such as handouts, guidelines or templates in order to assist faculties with duly conducting appointment processes.

Competitive processes as well as outstanding applicants are required to select the brightest minds. With internationally published job advertisements as well as by personally addressing potential applicants, especially women, young researchers or researchers abroad, a broad spectrum of applicants is recruited with regard to their profile and potential. Centrally available guidelines assist faculties with the recruitment process.

The online application portal for professorships facilitates a valid data quality for the work of appointment committees, data protection compliance in the interest of applicants as well as faster and more efficient administrative processing.

There must be no personal conflict of interests in order to assess candidates in an objective and fair manner. Therefore, in order to participate in appointment and evaluation processes, any form of bias must be ruled out. Prior to participating in selection procedures, the required distance for conducting unprejudiced assessments as well as any form of bias of each commission member is documented.  The criteria are based on the DFG guidelines.

Involving external experts in selection procedures ensures an independent assessment of applicants in appointment processes and improves the decision-making process as well as transparency by taking into account different perspectives. If necessary, expertise that cannot be covered by LUH professors may be acquired externally. External expertise is taken into account by professorial members of appointment committees or by obtaining written reviews from external experts. To ensure transparency, the selection of external reviewers must be justified and the absence of bias must be ascertained.

Candidates can access the online database in order to obtain information on current appointment processes. To ensure fair and respectful treatment of applicants in appointment processes, they receive regular and prompt written information about the current status of the process.

Equal opportunities, gender and diversity aspects are taken into account at all stages of appointment processes. From the release to the appointment proposal, all processes and decisions are checked with regard to equality, gender conformity and diversity. Advertisement texts, decisions to forgo application procedures, members of appointment committees, the selection of reviewers as well as appointment proposals require the approval of the equal opportunities officer and the university bodies. To ensure equal opportunities, the equal opportunities officer attends all commission meetings in an advisory capacity; therefore promoting the appointment policy to increase the proportion of female professors at LUH.

LUH appointment processes involve three levels of quality assurance via internal and external university bodies (Presidential Board, Senate, University Council). They check the appointment proposal with regard to university development plans, compliance with formal and legal requirements for conducting appointment processes as well as with regard to the quality of applicants within the ranking.