Katy Dickinson

49 Selected out of 104 SEED Applications

On 28 November, we of the SEED selection committee picked the participants for the 15 January - 15 June 2007 Established Staff mentoring term. 104 applications came in by and after the 24 November deadline. 78 of the applications were complete (meaning that the application form, resume, and required letters of recommendation were received by the deadline).

We very much appreciate the time and trouble that all applicants and their managers put into their SEED materials. It requires a great deal of work to apply and we thank them. Unfortunately, SEED received more applications than the program can accommodate. Because this group was exceptionally accomplished, the selection was very difficult. We were finally able to pick 49 participants.

We don't really know until the selection meeting how the applicants will compare against each other. In the time between the deadline and the selection meeting, Tanya Jankot and I independently read the applications and make notes. We confer a few times to check expectations and interpretations. We also get information from Human Resources confirming or correcting information on the applications (hire date, annual performance ratings, job grade level mostly). Sometimes, we even call managers to verify questionable information.

Some of the measures of the new SEED participants:

• 22% are managers.
• 24% are women.
• 33% were recommended by one or more Vice Presidents, Fellows, or Distinguished Engineers. Most of the rest were recommended by Directors.
• 37% had applied to SEED before (28% of those had applied twice before). SEED gives extra credit for persistence!
• 53% earned two or three Superior ("1") annual performance ratings in the last 3 years.
• They work in 13 countries (Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, USA, and UK).
• They come from 17 countries (China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland, Lebanon, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, USA, UK, and Vietnam).

I am looking forward to working with this extraordinary group of talented Engineering staff.

Posted at 02:47PM Dec 01, 2006 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  |