University of St Andrews

Any professional services post paid for by an external body will require Finance (FAS) funding confirmation prior to advertising.  The recruitment team will obtain this on your behalf when you contact them with your vacancy details. 

Please note that receiving an Award Letter or other indication that the grant application has been successful is not enough to proceed to advert if the grant code has not been set up and the money has yet to be transferred to the University. 

However in exceptional circumstances, the Head of School or Head of Unit, in discussion with the Quaestor/FAS, may agree to temporarily underwrite the post from central School/Unit funding and allow you to advertise prior to the grant code being available.  In the unlikely event that the money does not materialise from the funder, the post would be withdrawn (usually ahead of interviews and certainly before an appointment is made). 

What to do next is covered in our Advertising section. 

All professional services posts which are paid partially or wholly by a School/Unit cost centre and which have not been formally approved at strategic planning (see below) require Workforce Planning Group (WPG) approval prior to advertising.  

Workforce planning applications for new or replacement posts should be submitted via the online portal. You will be required to sign in via single-sign on which will take you to your dashboard and will provide access to previous applications as well as allowing you to submit further staffing requests.  Please note that only Heads of School/Unit can submit applications unless they have nominated you as a delegate. How to use the dashboard, nominate delegates and complete applications can be found in our Workforce Planning Guidance

If the Workforce Planning Group approve the post, HR will contact the Head regarding next steps.

Occasionally, the Quaestor may be prepared to approve requests offline eg where there is a very urgent need to replace an employee.  If the Quaestor approves the post offline, please follow the steps in the Advertising section.

It is expected that requests for most new professional services posts will have been considered at the School/Unit Strategic Planning Meeting.  If such requests have been approved, please send details of the post to the Recruitment team along with the formal written approval - either the planning outcome letter or an email from the Principal’s Office (Master/VP Strategy/Finance Director), Planning or Finance.  Posts which have been approved in principle only will require final approval via a WPG application (see internally funded posts).

If you are unsure if the post has been approved via your planning meeting, please contact the Recruitment team to discuss.