25 by 25 Info Session #1
Participants (50): Elvin, Hannah, Andreas W, Jarka, Manuel, Wayne, Thomas, Abhishek, Pablo GM, Spyridon, Tony, Alberto, Andreas S, Liviu, Lucian, Maite, Andrei, Adeel, jofdossa, Maite, Michael, Natalie, Nikitas, Tom, Maria A, pkk, Vasileios, Eirc, Giacomo, Antonio P, Nils, Tobias, Mario RR, Diego, Sokratis, Michal, Michal P, Alberto A, Adam, Anirudh, Jaroslav, Melissa, Pawel, Fabio, Jan, Vincent… have missed a few people
Notes
- Big focus for IT should be attracting female applicants (backed up by many people). Currently around 6% fellow applicants are women and this decreases with each contract step.
- Job language important. Can make sure that all vacancy notices are run through automatic language bias services as part of recruitment process, e.g. http://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/.
- We are also losing females as we go up the career ladder. Pipeline is not the only issue. Must understand reasons for leaving or not applying to next step.
- Student positions good place to enforce better gender balance, these positions should be mostly a training opportunity. Also easier to recruit more junior people.
- Must recruit 40% females to hit target. Ambitious.
- “Maybe IT would be more attrictive to women if we focus more on users and applications and less on infrastructure. The ratio of female candidates for computing infrastructure is probably lower than higher up the application stack.”
- Would like immediate guidance for ongoing PJAS recruitment now
- Parental leave
- It is not possible for both partners to be equally impacted by parental leave at the moment. This has far reaching consequences.
- Uptake of unpaid parental leave seems low (need statistics) and is not feasible for many junior colleagues. Leave should be equal and paid.
- Perhaps IT can run a pilot scheme with mandatory longer parental leave for non-birthing parent.
- For people going on longer parental leave must help ensure that
- Can stay connected to department during leave
- Will be represented at career progression meetings, and have credit given for their work
- Can regain their responsibilities when returning
- Mobility
- Not good at rotating people out of positions within IT
- Must improve meaningful internal mobility
- Nationality issues
- Few Northern European nationalities, follows general trends in economic crises
- Generally should try and hire a demographic that is not similar to you (unless you are a low demographic)
- For some under-represented countries have held specific events, e.g. recruitment tours of Czech, Russia, Spain. These have typically all come from motivated individuals. CERN Sprint Campus. Recruitment in Oviedo very effective some years ago.
- Greek example interesting, very high applicant numbers from specific departments (or even classes). Clearly message getting through that CERN is a good recruiter. How can we extend this?
- Will need statistics to be accessible for hiring managers so that they can take into account during process.
- Recruitment events (particularly in low representation member states)
- Should make it clearer that recruitment and outreach is possible and supported.
- Provide generic slides to make it easier to start and ensure unified message is passed.
- Make this part of MERIT (or similar for those without MERITS).
- Need relatable people at events.
- Incentive to have leave days or official travel for these events. Smaller incentive, e.g. extra half day off at the end of holiday also helpful.
- Efforts for 25by25 must be recognised. More effort from HR to promote. WIT is approached very often for recruitment events but is not paid to do this, need dedicated resources.
- “I think that CERN should also be public in announcing that CERN is interested in recruiting more women and improving gender balance (same for certain underrepresented nationalities)”
- How about chat events on Reddit/Quora/Social media?
- Look into platforms that promote diversity as a core principle e.g. outreachy.org and others
- Look at successful projects that have managed to attract interest or just shift focus to different areas e.g.
- Czechia
- financial support from the government
- staff/members tours of universities
- contact/advertising campaigns
- D. Mathieson successful initiative maybe collect ideas
- Paricipate in local/regional/country level Meetups
- Provide targeted presentations for students/high school level
Next steps