Northern Ireland’s civil service has more than 2,800 vacancies to fill – including some of its most senior posts.
The Northern Ireland Public Service (NICS) employs 23,000 people in a range of government departments, but there are 2,814 vacancies within the organization, new figures show.
Efforts continue to address the jobs. During its last recruitment initiative in March, some 8,000 people applied for jobs in the civil service.
The civil service is the largest employer in Northern Ireland, but has struggled throughout the last few years to find enough staff.
Figures for the end of May this year show 568 vacancies in Administrative Officer degree – the highest number of vacancies among all the NICS degrees.
Other degrees where there are a large number of positions to be filled are: Staff Officer (539); Executive Officer II (472); Deputy Principal (348); and Executive Officer I (342).
There are also 29 vacancies at Senior Public Service Level, which include directors and permanent secretaries in charge of running a government department.
The Northern Ireland Prison Service, which is managed by the Department of Justice and whose employees are classified as civil servants, currently also has 215 vacancies.
The latest details of NICS vacancies were unveiled by Finance Minister Conor Murphy in response to a meeting question from Andy Allen, MP, Ulster Unionist Party.
Mr Murphy’s department is responsible for recruitment within the civil service.
He described the NICS workforce as “complex” given the number of job degrees involved in a large number of organizations.
Mr Murphy, however, said work “continued adversity” to try to fill the vacancies.
“By the end of May, 25 pieces (714) of our vacancy load are in the presentation stage. This means that we have allocated candidates from existing bids to fill the vacancy and the candidates are in various stages of the bidding process, ”he said.
Last March, the minister said, there was an open NICS recruitment campaign to fill the roles of Personnel Officer (SO) and Deputy Chief (DP) “to generate new supply of candidates to fill and fill current vacancies at this level create for future vacancies that arise. ” .
“More than 5 000 people applied for the SO and 3 300 for the DP. The selection process is underway for both competitions, ”said the Minister of Finance.
He also said a NICS graduate management program would be launched in September.
“As well as continuing to pull out of existing inventory to fill vacancies that arise, there is an ongoing recruitment plan to create additional inventory,” he said.
“We currently have a number of competitions underway for these three professional groups: 41 for professional and technical positions; 10 live Prison Service uniform competitions; and two direct competitions for industrial degrees.
“In addition to the above, competition planning and design work is underway with regard to a number of other professions / degrees.”