Happy New Year to everyone!
I hope that you have all had a lovely holiday, and that unlike me, most of you are still on a break. There is something about having to be back early in the year that is difficult and yet easy at the same time. The difficult part is that you are back and have to get up early and get to work. It is also annual reporting time for me, so is one of the busiest times of the year. The easy part is that in some ways you can ease into it as there aren’t as many students around. Unfortunately, I think that governments on both sides of the Tasman haven’t made it easy for us at all, with significant budget cuts looming in Australia and fee free changes in New Zealand, making things quite stressful all round. So, let’s leave that behind and get into data analysis, dashboarding, metadata, data visualisation, data warehousing and surveying, etc. – it all feels so much saner.
Speaking of surveying, we surveyed you—our members and readers—about the AAIR Jobs Board on our website. The survey was open from 21 September through 20 October 2017. We sent the survey out to 905 recipients, and from that we received 76 responses (or an 8.4% response rate). The clear majority of respondents were AAIR members and were from Australia. They were predominantly from the university sector, with the top four job roles being: management, analyst, survey management and institutional planning.
Overall, 85.5% of respondents had visited the website. And although some people regularly visit the Jobs Board on the AAIR website, most accessed it after receiving the broadcast email. We asked for advice on how we might improve our Jobs Board, and while most didn’t have any advice, a few did. One person responded with a comment about how they used it which surprised me. They didn’t actually use it to apply for or advertise positions, but for a rather different set of reasons:
- to keep abreast of changes in the sector
- to download relevant positions descriptions that they might use to develop their own later
- to support a business case with their own institution.
Thank you to those who took the time to respond to the survey – we really do appreciate it and find it a useful way to hear from you. We will be using the information to improve the service and make changes. If you ever have something you want to say or raise with AAIR, please don’t hesitate to contact me at president@aair.org.au or through our Executive Officer at info@aair.org.au.
Visit the Jobs Board
Here’s to a great 2018!
Kathie Rabel
AAIR President
