The London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) is planning a pilot in the use of a recruitment consultant to help its member councils find staff with specialised digital and data skills.
This is thought to be a first in using a consultant as a shared resource and comes in recognition of the problems in filling some roles when it hard to compete on salary with the private sector. It also follows the recent development of a guide to effective recruitment and a library of job descriptions.
LOTI, which focuses on digital, data and innovation for public services in London, currently comprises 20 boroughs along with the Greater London Authority and London Councils. It has published an invitation to quote for the recruitment support, indicating that it will involve five days work per month for an initial nine months.
Responsibilities will include staying in regular contact with the chief information or digital officers of each member organisation to understand their needs and problems in recruitment, providing feedback to hiring managers on the language and content of job descriptions, benchmarking salaries for specific roles and headhunting candidates for roles shared between members.
First collaboration
LOTI director Eddie Copeland said that, while individual local authorities sometimes use recruitment consultants, he was not aware of it being done by a collaborative organisation – but that there could be big advantages.
“By collaborating, we can build a common view of hiring needs and challenges across London, improve the way job descriptions are written, work to promote digital, tech and data roles from across many different organisations and get detailed salary information for benchmarking purposes,” he said.
“In terms of our overall programme, LOTI recognises that without having the right people in place, boroughs can't fulfil their ambitions for digital and data innovation. We’ll be working with our members over the coming months to improve the way they advertise roles, attract diverse candidates from out of sector and ensure they develop their existing staff so they have the skills they need.”
As another step, LOTI is planning to launch a jobs board next month.
Image from iStock, anyakerbut
