Clarification on Searches for Scientific Director and Clinical Director

Scientific Director and Clinical Director Searches are primarily led by the NIH Office of Human Resources' (OHR) Division of Senior & Scientific Executive Management and the hiring IC Director, with input from the DDIR/OIR. Important points:

• All voting members of the search committee must be U.S. Government employees.
• It is highly recommended that the Chair or Co-Chairs of the search committee, as well as the majority of the voting members of the search committee, should hold positions equivalent to, or above, the level of Scientific Director or Clinical Director.
• For executive recruitments managed by OHR’s Division of Senior & Scientific Executive Management (including SD and CD recruitments), the Chair must be from outside of the recruiting IC and members from the IC in the line of supervision (up or down) of the position being advertised are not allowed to serve on the search committee. Also, for fairness and to reduce the appearance of bias during the recruitment process, OHR only allows limited membership from within the IC (1-2 members max) to serve on the search committee.
• To avoid the appearance of bias, committee members must not write letters of recommendation for candidates. If a committee member writes a letter, they must resign completely from the search committee. If there is a candidate who may be considered a recent, close collaborator of any member of the search committee, that member must be removed from the search committee as soon as this candidate is detected. A recent, close collaborator is defined by OIR as someone with 3 or more publications with the candidate in the last 5 years.
• A committee member with a direct report among the applicants, or who is directly supervised by an applicant, must resign from the committee.
• As a general principle, any committee member must disclose any relationship to, or interaction with an applicant to the other members of the committee, so the committee members can take this relationship or interaction into account when evaluating a candidate, or determine if recusal is required.