As postdoctoral job season approaches, applicants, writers of reference letters, and hiring departments alike struggle to manage all the pieces of information that must flow hither and thither to match prospective hires with departments.
We at SPIRES are happy to announce a new development in this arena. SPIRES Jobs database is now working with AcademicJobsOnline (AJO) so that any job posted on AJO in the HEP domains will be automatically harvested and posted on SPIRES Jobs. AJO is a fee-based service that originated at Duke University for the American Mathematical Society. It allows applicants and hiring departments (alas, departments must be North American) to manage reference letters, applicant packets, and the hiring process in a single online resource.
Several physicists, notably R. Sekhar Chivukula and E. Simmons at Michigan State and Jonathan Bagger at Johns Hopkins, worked with the Division of Particles & Fields and SPIRES to find an optimal way to manage applicant information. We identified AJO as a possible partner for institutions who want to take part in a central service, and an Open Letter has been sent to the HEP theory community.
We expect that people will continue to use SPIRES jobs as an announcement and posting board, as not everyone will post on AJO, but we hope that AJO may serve as a useful place to manage private applicant information. If AJO becomes successful within high-energy physics, then SPIRES Jobs will interoperate with them even more to provide extra services for the HEP community (for instance, CVs could be created on SPIRES...or soon INSPIRE...and sent directly into AJO) .
We're quite happy to serve as catalysts like this to help organize and promote such services. Services like AJO, and visionary and excited physicists like those involved here, help SPIRES serve the information needs of the HEP community. Let us know if you have ideas to make information flow more smoothly in the community.
