Ministerial departments in the UK take up to four months to fill vacancies, according to Freedom of Information requests submitted by recruitment software leader Bullhorn.
Bullhorn requested information on total recruitment spend in the financial year 2013/14, from the 24 government ministerial departments, and received complete information from nine of them. Five departments claimed it would be too expensive to compile the information (see appendix one) and no responses were received from the remaining departments. Bullhorn also requested information on the number of advertised vacancies in the last financial year, along with the percentage filled and the time they took to fill.
The results are as follows:
Recruitment spend in 2013/14 financial year
Department |
2011/2012 |
2012/2013 |
2013/2014 |
2014 Percentage Change (from last available data set) |
Attorney General’s Office |
£25,280 |
No response |
£0 |
-100% |
Cabinet Office |
£63,050 |
£253,463 |
£225,331
|
-12% |
Department for Education |
£108,231 |
£383,291 |
£317,926 |
-19% |
Department of Energy & Climate Change |
£222,000 |
£553,000 |
£836,000 |
41% |
Her Majesty’s Treasury |
£235,000 |
£333,000 |
£264,327 |
-23% |
Department for Transport |
£87,984 (average across DfT agencies) |
£102,926 (average across DfT agencies) |
£58,055 (Department for Transport Central only) |
-56% |
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills |
£464,114
|
£487,689 |
£715,070
|
38% |
Office of the Leader of the House of Lords |
£40,156 |
£41,920 |
£58,126
|
32% |
Department of Health |
£198,135 |
£132,605 |
£188,326
|
35% |
Department for Culture, Media and Sport |
No data |
No data |
£247,506 |
N/A |
Number of positions advertised, average time taken to fill positions and percentage of positions filled in 2013/14 financial year
Departments |
Total positions open in 2013/14 (internal + external except DfE which is only external) |
Average (mean) time to fill position (months) |
Percentage of positions filled |
Attorney General’s Office |
12 |
3.92 |
100% |
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills |
812 |
Not available |
Not provided |
Department for Communities and Local Government |
219 |
Not available |
89.04% |
Department for Culture, Media & Sport |
84 |
3.10 |
48.81% |
Department for Education |
79 |
3.42 |
97.47% |
Department of Energy & Climate Change |
663 |
Not available |
97.89%
|
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs |
334 |
Not available |
56.89% |
Department of Health |
116 |
4 |
79.31% |
Home Office |
6170 |
Not available |
52.43% |
Office of the Leader of the House of Lords |
74 |
1.55 |
90.54% |
Northern Ireland Office |
24 |
3.8 |
91.67% |
Department for Work and Pensions |
1315 |
2.54 |
59.47% |
Bullhorn’s international MD Peter Linas says: “The results provide a fascinating insight into Whitehall’s recruitment efforts. We were shocked by some of the time-to-fill and percentage of positions filled figures posted by the ministerial departments. The fact the Department for Culture, Media & Sport has a fill rate of less than 50 per cent for example, and took an average of three months to find the right candidates for its open roles, is surprising.
“Recruiters reported average time-to-fill periods for their agencies ranged from six to 46 days in our UK trends report this year, depending on whether they were fulfilling temporary or executive placements - we shouldn’t be seeing waiting periods of up to four months before departments find the right candidates. Even though only three per cent of UK agencies considered time-to-fill their most important metric last year, it will certainly be important to these ministerial departments and there is clearly room for improvement. The agencies most effectively pooling their candidate databases and social media networks will triumph in future, as well maintained applicant tracking systems and CRMs provide recruiters with quality candidates in a time efficient manner.”
Appendix one
Department for work and Pensions
Ministry of Justice
Department for International Development
Home Office
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs