Human Resources

1. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities ("What You Will Need" section): list any technical knowledge, programs, certifications, software applications and/or any other knowledge, skill or ability necessary to perform the job successfully.
2. Desired qualifications ("What We Would Like You to Have" section): These are desired skills which will enhance performance, but are considered a plus and not an absolute must to perform the job successfully.
1. Names of hiring supervisor (search committee chair), science advisor if applicable and search committee members.* As this info will help determine who gets access to applications in Avature, our applicant tracking system, please identify members who are not CU employees (i.e. federal partners or colleagues from other institutions). If you don't know that information at the time when you submit the request to post, please send it directly to cireshr@colorado.edu as soon as possible. Please think of a diverse committee with members from different career track levels, perspectives, genders if possible…

"Search Committee members are important partners to helprecruit a broad talent pool once the posting is activated" (Susan Sullivan, CIRES Director of Diversity and Inclusion).
*All CIRES Supervisor should be familiar with the Best Practices for an Inclusive Search guidelines. If you would like additional help regarding Diversity, Equity & Inclusion strategies during the posting, interviewing and recruiting process, please reach out to Susan Sullivan (CIRES Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) at Susan.Sullivan@colorado.edu).
o Please also include the speedtype (account #) to pay for the first 12 months of salary. Please consult with the CIRES Lead if applicable, to determine an appropriate salary range, and with you CIRES Finance Manager to determine if relocation is allowed by your funding source. Please remember that if salary for the first year is split between different speedtypes, the relocation amount will also be split among these speedtypes accordingly (in the same effort percentage levels). In compliance with the Colorado Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, Research Faculty HR will not allow us to make an offer outside of the advertised salary range except in limited justified circumstances. If we did not advertise for relocation at the time of posting, we will not be able to offer that either. The posting may advertise that relocation reimbursement funds are available,

yet a specific amount is not required at the time of posting.

1. Please also submit a 2-4 line justification of your team's need to fill this position at this time. This short statement will be sent to our CIRES Associate Director for Science, Christine Wiedinmyer, and to our HR Director, Angela Knight, when requesting their approval to proceed with your posting.

1. All of our positions are posted in our CIRES careers page, in CU's jobs portal, with Indeed.com, HigherEd, and InsideHigherEd. Your position will also be sent to the UCAR jobs listserv, Met-jobs, Meteojobs, and other relevant listservs if appropriate. In terms of targeting minorities and diverse candidates, our CU Ta lent Acquisition team will automatically put all job postings in front of the The Direct Employers Network. Each organization will then choose the ads which resonate with their audience and decide whether or not to share your posting with them.

Please let us know if you would like your position to appear in any additional posting sites, some of which will be for pay: Colorado State University, DU, Dice, AMS, AGU, Craigslist. In consultation with the Finance Department, CIRES HR will confirm whether your speedtype allows for advertising costs before posting. Additional paid advertising will have to be supported by your own funds (same speedtype that is used to pay a candidate's salary).

1. CIRES HR will add the following information to your posting:
1. "Who We Are" section: CIRES HR will include information on our CIRES institute as well as the link for your own laboratory or unit. For our NOAA labs, this information will come from the partners section of our website: https://cires.colorado.edu/
2. "What You Should Know" section: In this section, we will state if position is for a pre-determined amount of time (term-position); where the position is located; if role is at DSRC we will mention the clearance requirement; if the role requires US citizenship or permanent residence, and any other information which we consider important to share with applicants at the time of posting).
3. "Specialized Instructions to Applicants" section: CIRES HR will list the required documents (CV, cover letter, list of references and a copy of

the degree with certified translation if degree was obtained outside the US are our standard requirements). HR will also mention that letters of recommendation are not needed at the time of application and that, if candidate is identified as a finalist, they will be asked to request letters of recommendation from their professional contacts. RIO requires that all dossiers contain 1 confidential LOR before a hire can be approved. The LOR may now be replaced by SkillSurvey, which is an online, confidential, reference check solution and a comprehensive way to gather feedback and numerically rate your top applicants. Skillsurvey is generally more objective than letters of recommendation and highly recommended for IT, Finance, HR and most PRA positions. When a candidate is identified as a finalist, they will be asked to provide contact information for at least 5 professional references, 2 of whom must have been supervisors or professors. If you are hiring for an entry level position, our Recruiters in central HR can also request a Skillsurvey be filled out by only 3 professional references (1 of whom must have been a professor or supervisor). If you would like to see a sample survey, please click here.

1. CENTRAL HR will add the wording for the following sections of the job posting:
1. EEOO/ Diversity and Inclusion section:

The University of Colorado Boulder is committed to building a culturally diverse community of faculty, staff, and students dedicated to contributing to an inclusive campus environment. We are an Equal Opportunity employer, including veterans and individuals with disabilities.

1. Benefits section:

The University of Colorado offers excellent benefits, including medical, dental, retirement, paid time off, tuition benefit and ECO Pass. The University of Colorado Boulder is one of the largest employers in Boulder County and offers an inspiring higher education environment. Learn more about the University of Colorado Boulder.

1. The position Checklist:

After creating a position number, CIRES HR will circulate the Position Checklist through Docusign to obtain the approvals of the CIRES Associate Director for Science, Christine Wiedinmyer, the position Hiring Supervisor,

and the CIRES Director of Human Resources, Angela Knight. Research Faculty HR is copied in this Docusign transaction and will not approve the posting of your position through Avature unless the position checklist is approved by all. Please keep your eyes out for Docusign notifications throughout the hiring process and be prompt in your answers.

1. Posting to our Applicant Tracking System:

CIRES HR will create the posting in Avature and submit the posting to central HR for approval. The draft will be reviewed and approved by the Supervisor via email before the posting is activated to accept applications. Before an ad is posted, Central HR may also contact you with suggestions for making your job ad more inclusive. To this end, they will use Textio, which allows recruiters to check for inclusive language, score your ad based on inclusivity, and make suggestions for improvement.

1. Notification to Search Committee Chair and Access to Applications:

After you have suggested edits if applicable and have approved the posting, CU HR will make your ad public. The Hiring Supervisor will then receive notification that the posting is active and will be invited by CIRES HR to complete a consultation with the Recruiter. The objective of such consultation is twofold: 1. To review best practices for fairly reviewing, interviewing and selecting candidates, and 2. To learn the basic functions of Avature, our Applicant Tracking System. Search Chairs and Search Committee members have different levels of access in our Applicant Tracking System. We will be delighted to go through these very simple instructions with you.

1. Review of Applications:

Please remember:
To keep your own Excel/Google doc with notes on why each candidate is not moving forward. You will be asked to provide a justification for each candidate not hired at the end of the process.
In the role of the hiring supervisor, you are responsible for keeping interview notes for 3 years. You may also send your spreadsheet with such notes to cireshr@colorado.edufor our filing/storage if that is your preference.
Always put a position on hold if you consider you have plenty of qualified applicants or an overwhelming number of submissions. Please keep in mind that by Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity laws, every application

received, must be considered by the search committee.
To increase fairness and decrease bias in application review, werecommend that your search committee develops a rubric based on the job qualifications. Be sure the members of the search committee understand its use and have agreed to review each candidate thoroughly and consistently." (Susan Sullivan, CIRES Director of Diversity and Inclusion).
See Evaluating Applicants in the resources list below for information on fair application review.
Hiring Manager and/or members of the search committee will review applications and select top candidates for a phone screen or initial interview. With this objective in mind, you will access the position through the link provided to you by our central HR liaison (Blair Thomas Perri). Find your position title by unit, click on the title of the position you wish to review, and then on the big number in the middle of the window which indicates number of applications received to date. Select a candidate from the list, and then click "Review". After reviewing CV and cover letter, you will be prompted to respond "Yes", "Maybe" or "No" on whether you would like to proceed with further screening of a candidate. If you are not sure, choose "Maybe" or refrain from making a selection at all. Each search committee member can offer his/her feedback in the portal, but only the Search Committee Chair can see a compiled report of answers submitted by each committee member.

The search committee chair may also opt to use a Google doc or Excel spread to compile answers instead (outside of the applicant tracking system and as long as notes can be shared later on). If you do so, we suggest that you allow each member of the committee to evaluate candidates individually to later compile and compare answers—this is to avoid the members of the search committee influencing each other.

If you are the Hiring Supervisor or Committee Chair, you may move candidates through the hiring process stages by selecting the "Manage Job" tab on the top right corner of the screen. ** Please be aware that applicants can see their current status if changed while on the "Manage Job" tab, so please instruct CIRES HR to send out a regret letter before you move a candidate to "No longer consider" on such side of the Portal.
*A candidate should always be notified of not being selected for the job via a formal regret letter from central HR or from you before they are dispositioned (and, in this case eliminated) in the system.

1. On campus or Virtual Interviews:

After an initial phone screen or short interview, finalists/top candidates (2- 5) will be invited on campus for a longer formal interview or be interviewed using Zoom or Google Meet. Make sure that committee members, length of interviews and questions remain consistent for all finalists. Please review the following documents with Sample Interview questions suggested by CU and our CIRES's Recruiter's guidelines on the Do's and Don'ts of Interviewing before your interviews.

Hiring is a Legal Process. The University of Colorado is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we must comply with EEOO laws. Please never ask a candidate about age, mental or physical disability, medical or genetic information, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy or plans for becoming a parent, marital status, race, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation or preference, gender, religion, crime history/records. Also never ask a candidate about their prior salary as it is illegal to do so. Please consult this guide outlining lawful and unlawful questions to ask during an interviews.

*None of these questions are legal even if you have the best intentions in assuring access to DSRC or a successful immigration/VISA process.
Hirevue:
You may have an outstanding candidate pool and find it is difficult to identify only a handful of finalists to move forward and into the interviewing stage. In that case, you could choose to start with 15-minute phone screenings for a larger group or you may want to try Hirevue.
Hirevue is a video-interviewing solution which allows you to assess a larger set of candidates in a fast, efficient manner. You would need to identify 6- 12 candidates to interview through Hirevue, put a set of questions together, and determine the due date to receive candidates' recorded responses. CENTRAL HR will then take care of all communication with candidates, send them the instructions, along with your list of questions and the due date to submit answers. Finally, you would watch each video- interview in your own time, and ask the search committee members to do the same before you can all meet to debrief and select the smaller set of finalists who will be moving forward to the longer in-person/ Zoom/ Google Meet interviews.

Requesting Letters of Recommendation (LOR) or Skillsurvey: It is also a

good idea to request the Letter/s of Recommendation or initiate a SkillSurvey at the same time that you invite the top-tier applicants on campus/to a final interview so that you may use that information in your discussion of each candidate prior to making your decision. Please submit a ticket to cireshr@colorado.edu if you would like to proceed with these requests.
When you request a LOR through HR, the candidate will receive an email prompting them to enter contact information for his professional references. These professional references will then receive a request from CU to submit the reference letters). If you prefer to use SkillSurvey, this is a good time to launch the reference requests through that application as well. CENTRAL HR will let you know once those Skillsurvey reports have been completed and will share them with you via email for your consideration.
*Whether you use SkillSurvey or request one or multiple letters of recommendation, we also encourage you to reach out to professional references by phone to discuss the candidate's abilities or areas of concern openly (especially if you have additional questions or areas of concern after the interview). Please reach out to cireshr@colorado.edufor a sample questionnaire for that phone conversation if needed.
Decision: Committee members will meet to discuss/decide on top choice. "Inclusive practices in committee discussions will acknowledge and mitigate power dynamics. Ideally, there may be a range of positional power represented on the committee (e.g. junior colleagues). Committee members may be more outspoken or may prefer to sit back as observers. The search chair should be prepared to solicit feedback from all committee members, identify and facilitate issues, or offer creative solutions forward if an impasse is reached." (Susan Sullivan, CIRES Director of Diversity and Inclusion).

1. Offer and Negotiation:

Salary: Before proceeding with a verbal offer, the Committee Chair should communicate with CIRES HR (Jimena Ugaz and Angela Knight) and their lab's CIRES Lead (if applicable) for salary approval. While considering compensation, we will take into account many factors including a candidate's education, years of overall and relevant experience, nature of the work to be performed, funding source and budget, and peers with relevant experience to ensure salary equity within your unit and CIRES.

Please take into consideration that a candidate may also counteroffer. Your verbal offer should be presented by phone or video call and not by email.
As per our Cooperative Agreement, the CIRES Supervisor should present the offer and handle any and all negotiations with candidates. Our Cooperative Agreement forbids our federal employees to directly makes offers or negotiate with future CU employees.
If you are wanting to offer relocation, please make sure that your grant/fund allows for relocation expenses by consulting with your CIRES finance manager. Once you know if your grant/fund allows relocation, please reach back out to HR for a typical relocation amount depending on family size and place from which candidate is relocating. Both the hiring supervisor and your CIRES finance manager will have to approve the amount for relocation by signing an acknowledgement in the hiring checklist.
*Before you offer relocation, please be aware that it is required that relocation be charged proportionate to how an employee's effort is supported for the first 12 months of employment. This could mean that the employee is supported for the first 12 months of employment on 1 project and all of the relocation will be charged to that 1 project. If multiple speedtypes/projects will support the employee's first 12 months of pay, it is important to consider this at the hiring stage so that the CIRES finance manager can verify relocation costs are allowable on the multiple grants/funds.
If candidate needs more information on benefits, or is on the fence about accepting an offer with CIRES, please refer them to CIRES HR so that we can send them a guide with information on our robust benefits and perks package. We will also put them in touch with the benefits office or the appropriate third party vendor if helpful.

1. Verbal Acceptance:

When there is a verbal acceptance of your offer, the Hiring Committee Chair should communicate with cireshr@colorado.edu so that we can focus on the next steps in the process, which may include immigration needs, professional references and background check.

VISA Needs: After the candidates verbally accepts your offer, please ask them if they "are legally authorized to work in the U.S or if they will need VISA sponsorship now or in the future?" If they will need help to obtain

these immigration documents, you will be referred to our Visa expert, Janet Garcia (Janet.Garcia@colorado.edu). Our Immigration specialist will reach out to the candidate to discuss Visa history and immigration status before she can make a recommendation on the type of work authorization or Visa to be processed in each case along with an estimated timeline.
The verbal acceptance of your candidate also gives us the green light to start the University of Colorado background check process through central HR. Please be mindful that a background check can take between 2 days and 2 weeks to complete. Central HR needs the candidate's permission before running background checks, so please alert the candidate to promptly authorize this process. Please note that the University of Colorado background check is independent and in addition to the federal clearance process for those new employees who will be housed at one of the NOAA labs (and which the new employee will complete with the guidance of your NOAA access verifier).

1. The Hiring Checklist (please use this updated version of the form):

The CIRES supervisor will then fill out the hiring checklist and submit it to cireshr@colorado.edu. A hiring supervisor must identify the Lab or unit director and the finance manager in this form. If the hire is for one of the NOAA labs, they must also name the access verifier, the trusted agent and the science advisor in the hiring checklist. HR will then circulate the hiring checklist through Docusign to the federal partners, the supervisor and the CIRES Finance Manager for the needed signatures.
As the new employee's supervisor, if the new comer will be housed at DSRC or if they will be working with federal data sets or equipment, it is your responsibility to stay in close contact with the access verifier regarding progress of your new hire on obtaining federal clearance. You should be checking weekly on that progress and making sure that the new employee is cooperating and responding to requests promptly to ensure they can start on their targeted start date.

1. The Offer letter:

Once the hiring checklist has been approved by the hiring supervisor, federal partners if appropriate, the unit Director, and the speedtype's finance manager in CIRES Finance, CIRES HR will send out the offer letter to the candidate. The Supervisor will get the chance to review it before it is routed through Docusing.

Once you receive the offer letter, please focus on checking title and career track information, start date, supervisor's and science advisor's names along with salary and relocation amounts and signature lines for names' and titles' accuracy. The letter will be signed by the Payroll Liaison in CIRES HR, the CIRES Associate Director for Science, the HR Director, the hiring supervisor, Research Faculty HR and, finally, the candidate.

Relocation reimbursement: *Process for successful reimbursement:

If applicable, CIRES HR will send a separate email to candidates who have officially accepted an offer and who have been offered relocation on the procedure for successful relocation reimbursement once they have started working with us.

1. Regrets and Dispositioning:

Once the offer letter has been signed, you should call or write
a personalized regret letter to those candidates who you interviewed on campus or with whom you conducted a longer interview via Zoom/ GoogleMeet. All other candidates not interviewed can be notified by central HR via their customary regret letter. If you are a search committee chair with dispositioning rights, please wait until we have sent regrets to candidates before dispositioning them in Avature, as they will be able to access this information. It is proper to send regrets first and before we eliminate them from the pool of candidates in the Avature system. If you would like CIRES HR to be in charge of dispositioning (eliminating candidates from the pool of applicants by entering the reason of why they did not advance) please send cireshr@colorado.edu your Google Doc or Excel spread with your notes on why each candidates did not advance.
*Please never send a regret letter to any of your top candidates (candidate #2 or candidate #3) who you may consider hiring, until an offer letter has been signed by your top contender (even if they have already verbally accepted your offer). Strong candidates receive multiple offers and negotiate until the very last minute. This is to avoid the uncomfortable situation of making an offer to your top 2nd or 3rd candidates after you have previously sent them a rejection note.

1. Orientation and Onboarding your New Employee
2. Once the offer letter is signed, CIRES HR will reach out to the new employee welcoming them to the Institute

1. About a week before your new employee joins CIRES, LuAnn Line from CIRES HR will send them an email with important information on the process for Identikey activation, the I-9 verification process, benefits, their W-4 form, direct deposit, the Buff One card, mandatory trainings, and their participation in the QSP orientation.
2. All new employees attend the Quick Start Program orientation, which is offered by central HR most Mondays as well as on the 1st of the month when possible. In this short orientation, candidates will learn about benefits, the CU Information portal, My Leave, how to obtain a Buff One card, buy a parking permit, the I-9 verification process and required trainings.
3. Please communicate regularly with Janet Garcia if your employee will need a VISA so you can learn on the progress of that paperwork. You will be required to participate in this process by offering information on the type of work to be performed, the candidate, and your professional field.

Please make sure your new employee is all set-up with his/her technology needs and has an assigned office by their first day of work with CIRES. Lucia Harrop, at David Skaggs, is an excellent resource for onboarding new hires. Please reach out to her with questions. If you are not part of a NOAA lab, please
contact cireshr@colorado.edu so that we may help you with any such needs if appropriate.
After the new employee completes the CU orientation, we will focus on the onboarding process, which will extend throughout the first year of employment, while the employee navigates all new information and learns about our Institute. All CIRES Supervisors should consult this Onboarding page with innumerable resources to assist you in guiding your employee's integration to CIRES and the University of Colorado Boulder.

CIRES HR is here to support you with your successful hiring and onboarding processes. Please reach out to us with questions and concerns or to offer feedback on this Hiring Guide.