Lund University does not put enough effort in getting PhD students and other employees that are not affiliated with the University yet. This states a former PhD student at Lund University.
The former PhD student criticizes the way in which academic positions are advertised. The former doctoral student points out that vacancies for research positions or professorships are usually published at the website of Lund University only and for a very short amount of time. As such, it is hard for many qualified candidates that have no link with Lund University to even find out that there is a vacancy.
“Many times, the job announcement is placed only on the LU website, and not openly advertised on international job websites within the research field”, the former PhD student says in a comment to Lundagard.net.
“Very specific requirements”
According to the former PhD, professors have often already a good student or post-doc of them in mind for the new position, which means that there is no necessity to spread the job advertisements properly. They might also formulate the advertisement in such a way that hardly anyone would fit the description, except for the one candidate.
“Job announcements are often written with very specific requirements, in order to help a preferred candidate get hired”, according to the former doctoral student.
“Still technical issues”
The University’s Head for Human Resources, Ingrid Estrada-Magnusson, recognizes that he University is still working on this point, but doesn’t think that the situation is as bad as described.
“All of our open positions are on our website and all of them are also put on international websites like Stepstone. We are now working with getting it also on EurAxess (a European platform for research jobs, ed.), but there are still technical issues that prevent this.”
In addition, the University plans to buy a completely new recruiting system, which should be implemented this Fall.
“One of our requirements is that the system will place the job vacancies automatically on the international websites, including EurAxess.”
There are reasons
Ingrid Estrada-Magnusson argues that there are good reasons for the fact that job descriptions are sometimes formulated very specifically.
“We have some very small research fields for which specific competence is needed, which indeed results in a small amount of applicants.”
Asked about whether it ever happens that professors formulate in such a way that it will suit their favorite candidate, she answers hesitantly, however.
“I cannot swear on that it never happens. Our organization is too big for that. But it shouldn’t happen. If we want to be one of the world-best universities, it is in our interest to get people from everywhere.”
Because of privacy reasons the former PhD has decided to remain anonymous.
Have you the same experience as the PhD student? Write an e-mail to lundagard@lundagard.se or comment below!
1 Comment
Former Phd student
Seems Lundagard only quoted me and didn’t bother to read the independent report I sent them, where it is stated that insider allocation of jobs is a systematic problem in Lund and Swedish universities, and not just the complaint of one person. http://www.sns.se/sites/default/files/utbildning_forskning_samverkan_english.pdf
– The anoymous former doctoral student