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Hiring Process

The Life Sciences Financial Services office assists with the hiring process for technicians, post-docs, graduate students, and volunteers. Contact your assigned LSFS staff member to verify the type of employee and classification.  If the hire is a full-time employee, the following steps will occur.

1. Your assigned staff member will help you decide what classification the employee should be. Once this has been determined, the staff member will send a job description template to you.

Please do not delete any information from the template but you may add details to the job summary and, under the Principal Accountabilities section, add skills to the list under activity, as well as additional activities as you deem necessary. You will need to complete the qualifications, competencies and working conditions sections. You should highlight in yellow those skills, both those already listed and those you add, which pertain to the position you are filing. In addition, for each of the activities under Principal Accountabilities, please enter the % Time and indicate if it is an essential function. Also indicate the hours per week (37.5 or 40 hours).

2. Once the staff member has received the form with your revisions they will submit it for review and request that it is posted on the Northwestern University Careers website. It will need to be posted for at least one week. All applicants are required to apply on the Careers website and you will have access to the applicants’ resumes. 

3. You will need to interview, either in person or by phone at least three applicants and should keep a record of the people you interview. You will need to fill out the New Hire Form and write up a summary of the reference checks (or use the reference form available under Forms). 

4.  Once you have decided on a candidate you should send the LSFS staff member the name of the candidate you are considering. You should not make a job offer or discuss salary with a candidate until the LSFS staff member have received authorization from WCAS Dean’s office.

5.  LSFS will submit the new hire form, reference checks and resume to the LSFS Business Administrator for a final review before submission to WCAS HR. WCAS HR will send the approval to central HR to send out an offer letter via email.  Once the candidate has returned the signed offer letter, central HR will complete a background check.