Job Announcement


JOB ANNOUNCEMENT
________________


The EARN Association is interested in recruiting staff members to work
in the areas of direct and indirect networking user support, technical
support, and technical writing.  In order to help us to fill these po-
sitions  as  soon as   possible, we  would  like  you to circulate the
enclosed job description without delay and as widely  as  possible  in
your  country.  In  particular, please forward this to people whom you
consider to be suitable candidates.
A  copy  of this announcement is available from LISTSERV@localhost
as: EARN JOBS-ANN

The  deadline  for applications is September 20, 1993.

ABOUT EARN
__________


EARN originated as an international version of BITNET to cover Europe,
the Middle East and Africa, and EARN has kept close  cooperation  with
BITNET  and  CREN.    At  the  beginning, EARN comprised about 15 West
European countries and from 1990 East European countries were  quickly
connected.    At  present,  the new countries emerging from the former
Soviet Union are becoming members and  at  present  EARN  connects  31
countries.

A  common  IP  infrastructure  (EBONE) is used today in Europe both by
Internet and EARN users.   As a result  of  this,  NJE  can  today  be
assimilated  with  other  applications  based  on IP lines like FTP or
Telnet. EARN is, obviously, still coordinating the activities  related
to NJE, but is also focusing on other user services which are entirely
independent of NJE.

EARN  is  nowadays  focused on maintaining the satisfactory quality of
service reached  during  the  past  two  years,  on  facilitating  the
mail/file  exchange  with other networks, and on offering more and new
services on top of the network layers.

A completely new service in the  users  support  area  has  also  been
commenced  in  April  1993.    Users, as well as system administrators
throughout EARN, often  come  across  problems  in  dealing  with  the
network and have no local source of help to turn to.  EARN has decided
to  address  this  problem by offering a Net-consulting Help Desk ser-
vice.  The service is free of charge and is limited to users  in  EARN
countries.

EARN  is  providing  for its users up to date documentation concerning
all the important services available via the network.  A comprehensive
set of documents concerning e-mail, file transfer and interactive mes-
sages, and covering the major  operating  system  platforms  has  been
produced  and is available on-line.  A set of Pocket guides as well as
Quick Reference Cards and Primers for novice users have  been  printed
and are freely distributed to EARN members. These guides and reference
cards  concentrate  on  the most popular servers reachable through the
network (e.g. LISTSERV, Trickle, BITFTP, RELAY,  WWW,  WHOIS,  Archie,
Gopher, and so on).

The EARN association is partially funding the development of a DEC/VMS
version of LISTSERV, to be developed by E.Thomas, and has also started
a  special  interest  group  for the definition of an unsolicited file
transfer protocol over TCP/IP, to be used by LISTSERV as  well  as  by
any other server performing DISTRIBUTE functions.
In addition EARN is also collecting topological data for the Internet,
without  which  there  can  be no efficient distribution, and plans to
update and maintain such information in a standard form  as  a  value-
added service to its membership.

It  is  important  to note that NJE is used where appropriate but that
other protocols are chosen where more practical and that the focus  is
today  on  the  applications mentioned above. The goal is to bring the
advanced end user services to all countries in Europe, the Middle East
and Africa.



JOB DESCRIPTION FOR ADDITIONAL EARN STAFF POSITIONS.
____________________________________________________


Ideally we would like to hire one permanent staff (at the EARN  Office
near Paris, France) and one part time (50%) staff (work location to be
decided  with  the candidate) but we are open to discuss different ar-
rangements, case by case, in order to guarantee the maximum efficiency
of the new staff.



JOB DESCRIPTION FOR THE FULL TIME POSITION (REF: POS-1)
_______________________________________________________


The tasks assigned to the full time EARN staff are the following:

o   technical assistance to the EARN community

o   user support on networking tools

o   maintenance of existing tools

o   write technical documentation (English) for users on network tools



QUALIFICATIONS (REF: POS-1)
___________________________


o   a background as system engineer

o   at least two years of management experience in the LAN/WAN field

o   knowledge of the Academic networks world (BITNET/Internet)

o   at least one year of experience in user support services

o   knowledge of one or  more  of  the  following  operating  systems:
    VM/CMS, VMS, UNIX.

o   knowledge of at least one high level program language

o   knowledge   of   general   communications  protocols  will  be  an
    advantage.

o   applicants must speak and write English fluently and  be  able  to
    cooperate in an international environment

o   applicants must be available to travel



EMPLOYMENT (REF: POS-1)
_______________________


Employment  may  be  either as a temporary assignment from current em-
ployer  paid  by  EARN or direct employment by the  EARN  association,
in both cases for a 12 month period, with possibility of extensions.



JOB DESCRIPTION FOR THE PART TIME POSITION (50%)(REF: POS-2)
____________________________________________________________


The task assigned to the part time EARN staff is the following:

o   write technical documentation (English) on existing network tools.



QUALIFICATIONS (REF: POS-2)
___________________________


o   experience  of  the Academic networks world (BITNET/Internet) as a
    user.

o   experience of networking tools in  use  in  BITNET/Internet  as  a
    user.

o   at least two years of experience in technical writing.

o   a perfect knowledge of English (mandatory)



EMPLOYMENT (REF: POS-2)
_______________________


Employment  may  be  either  as  a part time temporary assignment from
current employer  paid  by  EARN or part time contract by the EARN as-
sociation, in both cases for a 12 month period,  with  possibility  of
extensions.



HOW TO APPLY
____________


Send  your  resume to the EARN Technical Manager before September, 20,
specifying for which position (POS-1 or POS-2) you wish to  apply,  in
BOTH  the following ways:

o   via the network to:  HI@localhost

o   hardcopy by ordinary mail or by fax to:
                           Daniele Bovio
                           EARN Office
                           CIRCE
                           BP 167
                           F91403 Orsay Cedex
                           France
                           Tel: +33 1 6982 3976
                           Fax: +33 1 6928 5273

                                                 d.