Breakdown of social security recruitment: FOI release

Information requested

1. How many new permanent hires joined your organisation in 2022?

2. How many new permanent hires came through external providers in 2022?

3. How many team members work in your Recruitment Team?

4. What is your time to hire from adverting to onboarding?

5. What was your attrition rate in 2022?

6. What is your average cost per hire (including attraction and screening) in 2022?

7. How much did you spend with external providers of permanent recruitment in 2022?

8. How many unique agency contractors/temps/interims did you use in 2022?

9. How much did you spend on agency contractors/temps/interims in 2022?

10. Are you meeting your diversity targets? (yes or no)

11. How many candidates applied for roles in 2022? What is your candidate drop-out rate?

12. Which systems do you use for your permanent recruitment process?

Response

1. 2,222 new permanent hires that joined Social Security Scotland in 2022

2. Social Security Scotland are part of the UK civil service and are governed by the civil service commission for all external recruitment activity. The requirements for all appointments to be made is that they are based on merit through fair and open recruitment.Therefore 0 permanent hires came through external providers in 2022.

3. As of August 2023, 27 people work in Social Security Scotland’s Resourcing team.

4. Our average time to hire (advertising to offer) across all campaigns between August 2022 and July 2023 was 62 days.

5. To answer this question we have interpreted ‘attrition rate’ to be what we calculate as ‘turnover’, which in 2022 was 6.0%. We define turnover as being the number of directly employed Social Security Scotland employees that have left the Scottish Government (including agencies and non departmental public bodies) as a proportion of the average directly employed headcount over the year.

6. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. Cost per hire is a complex calculation, Social Security Scotland do not hold the information for the time period requested.

7. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested. Social Security Scotland do not use external providers to provide permanent recruitment or appoint candidates as part of the recruitment process.

8. 435

9. For Calendar year 2022 Social Security spend on contractors/ temps/ interims was £19.2 million.

10. A: The Scottish Government or any of the Executive Agencies or Delivery Bodies do not set diversity targets. We conform with the Civil Service Commission’s Recruitment Principles and hold all permanent recruitment through fair and open competition.

11. Social Security Scotland received 21,052 applications for various roles across this time period. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have the information you have requested, drop-out rate was not a metric which was tracked.

12. Social Security Scotland as an executive agency of the Scottish Government, share a number of corporate systems. This includes systems used for recruitment activities.

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.