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PAL Academic Course Contact Guide: Placement Coordinators recruitment process

This is a guide created by the Central PAL Team that provides information and advice on being a PAL Academic Course contact.

Placement PAL Leader Recruitment

This page contains information, guidance, and template communications for you to use on the following:

- Promoting the role of Placement PAL Leader 

- Receiving Placement PAL Leader applications 

- Shortlisting process 

- Employment process 

Promoting the role

To encourage applications please do the following: 

- Promote the opportunity to apply to become a Placement PAL Leader by sharing the following link with your students

Apply to be a Placement PAL Leader 

- Ensure your students fill out the right application form. 

Please note: the Apply page contains 3 different application forms, one per Faculty. 

 

Receiving Placement PAL applications

- The Central PAL Team receive the applications centrally, and then process the details into a secure SharePoint spreadsheet that you will all have access to. The link to the SharePoint will be emailed to you. 

- The PAL Team will update the spreadsheet with the new applications received regularly. Placement Coordinators within the same Faculty will have access to the same spreadsheet which will contain separate tabs for each of them. 

- Once we've set a deadline and that has passed, we ask you guys to use the spreadsheet to do your shortlisting (including any reserves we might want to approach as a contingency in the event of Leaders withdrawing)

Shortlisting candidates

To shortlist candidates, we ask that you please: 
- Read through all application responses carefully 
- Read the job description attached below to verify the suitability of the candidates 
- Shortlist by numbering your applications in the order that you wish the candidate to fill the position (1 being your first choice, 2 being your second choice etc.)
  • A column has been provided in the spreadsheet for you to rank candidates 
  • This will enable us to confirm positions and approach reserves in case of withdrawals 
  • Insert and "X" where you feel the candidate is not suitable for the role

Employment process

Once the shortlisting has been completed, the PAL Team will communicate the outcome of applications to candidate and begin the employment process for the successful ones. 

Before your successful PAL applicants can begin their training or conduct any PAL work, they will need to be formally employed by the university and be made compliant to start work in line with employment regulations. 

To become compliant, students will need to complete a pack of online employment documents as provided by BU's Part Time Hourly Paid (PTHP) Team and provide a form of Right to Work documentation. Right to Work in most cases is a passport, but if students do not have a Passport or are a Tier 4 student, the PTHP Team will be able to advise what other documents they can provide instead.

All information pertaining to the employment of Placement PAL Leaders will be communicated by the PAL Team directly once they are confirmed as successful and processed by the Part Time Hourly Paid Team.