Recruitment data on Scottish Government jobs in 2017: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02995
Date received: 11 December 2017
Date responded: 11 January 2018

Information requested

Recruitment data on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and non-STEM jobs by gender for the past year by job title, department, location, number of posts, closing date, salary, whether advertised as full-time or part-time or another working pattern, total number of applicants (male/female) total number of shortlisted applicants (male/female) and total number appointed full-time and part-time (male/female).

You asked also for any wording in the advert or job description referring to availability of flexible or part-time working or indicating the employer's willingness to consider flexible or part-time working.

You asked 3 additional questions:

• Do you have gender neutral job adverts / descriptions? If so, please send me the guidelines that your staff use when writing job adverts / descriptions.

• If you do not have gender-neutral job adverts / descriptions, do you have any plans to introduce this?

• If any of the posts were advertised using a recruitment agency, please indicate which jobs and provide details of the information provided to the recruitment agency regarding gender-neutral wording and letting applicants know of availability of flexible working (if applicable).

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have all of the information you have requested as it is not held centrally.

We have been able to provide data on vacancies in the period broken down by grade, job title, number of vacancy positions, business area, location, advert start and end dates and applicant numbers. This is set out in the table attached at Annex A.

You also asked additional questions as set out above relating to gender neutral job adverts and flexible working.

All of our vacancies are non- gender specific and so all adverts and job descriptions are gender neutral. Our guidelines for our recruiting managers on writing job adverts covers areas such as main duties and required skills and competencies. There are no specific guidelines on gender as gender neutrality is a constant in all our adverts.

We do not generally use the services recruitment agencies to advertise vacancies. However if we were to use their services there would be no particular information given in respect of gender neutral wording. As above our vacancies are open to all candidates who have the required skills and competence and gender is not a factor.

Information on the availability of flexible working is contained in all of our person specifications. Consideration is given to all candidates interested in part-time or other non-standard working patterns and this is fully assessed against the workload and requirements of the post.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

FoI-18-02995 - Annex A - tabulated data .pdf

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