Recruitment & Hiring

When you realize you need to hire a new employee, complete and submit the Request to Fill form in the HR ServiceNow (SNOW) Portal. Once submitted, the request goes through a review and approval workflow before it can be posted.

You’ll receive an email alert once your request is approved and the job will be posted in Careers@Harvard within 48 hours. Your TA Partner will reach out to arrange a kickoff meeting to discuss the job details, sourcing strategies, candidate success criteria and establish an effective search process.

Your TA Partner begins by screening all applicant resumes and forwarding those that meet the basic qualifications and agreed upon criteria. You’ll receive an email with links to review candidate profiles and you can share your feedback directly within the system. Resume review will be an ongoing, collaborative process with continuous feedback to build a strong pool of qualified candidates. To ensure you’re meeting with the most promising individuals, your TA Partner will also conduct initial phone screens to assess qualifications and set clear expectations around key details such as salary targets, hybrid work arrangements, and term appointments, if applicable. We recommend 5-7 phone screens to identify the top 3-5 candidates to advance to the interview stage.

Your TA Partner will support you with strategies for conducting effective interviews and can provide helpful resources, including sample interview questions, to ensure you’re well prepared. To simplify this stage of the search, Careers@Harvard offers capability to schedule interviews and share post interview feedback directly in the system. We suggest interviewing 3-5 candidates in the first round and narrowing to the top 2 frontrunners for final round interviews. While many departments have had great success using Zoom for the entire interview process, a campus visit can be an important part of the experience for some positions. In that case we still suggest using Zoom for the first round to reduce the number of campus visits. Then, those who progress to the final round can be invited to interview on site. Be sure to consult your TA Partner for more suggestions on enhancing the candidate experience during the interview process.

Once you’ve identified a finalist, your TA Partner will work closely with you to support the hiring decision. You may choose to proceed with an offer contingent upon reference checks or request references prior to extending an offer.

As part of our inclusive hiring practices, references are collected through Crosschq, a digital feedback platform that provides both qualitative and quantitative insights to validate your final decision. It’s an easy process for all parties and turnaround time is typically 48 hours from the point the candidate submits their references. We recommend conducting reference checks for just one finalist.

All offers are to be made by the HLS TA team. A verbal acceptance is secured before generating the formal offer letter within the Careers@Harvard portal. Once the finalist confirms via DocuSign, the hiring manager receives an email notification and the TA team will initiate the standard pre-employment screening (references and background checks).

The TA team also initiates the new hire’s onboarding tasks in ServiceNow (SNOW). Two weeks prior to start date, new hires will receive a welcome email with temporary login credentials and a link to begin their onboarding tasks. At the same time, hiring managers also receive email notifications to complete the IT Services request and additional tasks to prepare for their new hire’s first day.