Ministerial departments in the UK failed to fill 72 percent of vacancies in 2014/15, according to Freedom of Information requests submitted by the leading cloud-based CRM provider, Bullhorn.
Bullhorn requested information on total recruitment spend in the financial year 2014/15 from all 24 government ministerial departments. It also requested information on the number of advertised vacancies in the last financial year, and the percentage filled.
A fall in recruitment spend is a trend witnessed across several ministerial departments, with the Department for Education and the Department for Energy & Climate Change registering a 24 and 13 percent decrease respectively.
The results are as follows:
Recruitment spend in 2014/15 financial year

Number of positions advertised, number of positions filled and percentage of positions filled in 2014/15 financial year
Commenting on the results, Bullhorn’s international MD Peter Linas says: “The results show very diverse recruitment patterns across each of the departments. The fact the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has a fill rate of just four percent and the Department for Work & Pensions 21 percent, is really quite shocking.
“There’s certainly room for improvement. According to our UK trends report this year, the top sources of qualified candidates in 2014 were existing candidates from recruitment CRMs and social media. So recruiters serving the public sector really need to make sure they are making the most of the technology available to them to find the most appropriate candidates for these roles.”