Public Appointments, heard of them?

I certainly hadn’t until recently. Yes, having worked in recruitment for longer than I care to admit, I know about non-exec directors and board members, but Public Appointments was not a term I was familiar with, and I expect many of you are the same.

So what are they? - In a nutshell they are the NEDs, board members, lay members, experts and specialists that make up the boards of directors and advisory committees for public bodies across the UK, delivering essential public services and are generally appointed by government ministers, some by HM The Queen and the Prime Minister.

As you can imagine, some of the public bodies are pretty high profile, within my government department, The Dept for Education, we have 18 public bodies varying from Ofsted to the Construction Industry Training Board and look after almost 200 appointees. We usually advertise around 30 vacancies each year, but it’s not just the DfE that have these roles. Currently advertised across government we have vacancies within sport, museums, health, nuclear research, law and finance to name a few. You can register to receive alerts and view the vacancies here.

We’re not as diverse as we’d like and are working on it. An action plan  identifying potential barriers to appointments, putting in place a number of actions to overcome them can be found here and current statistics here. We want our appointments to be as diverse as the communities we serve and encourage candidates with the widest range of backgrounds to apply.

If you are at a point in your career when you would like to give something back, to contribute your expertise and support the UKs public services for the future, take a look. You won’t find a snazzy, difficult to navigate, online application system(although we are working on this). Most of our vacancies ask for a CV and covering letter.   What you might find yourself doing is influencing decisions that affect everyone’s lives, developing your career, gaining board experience and boosting your skills, meeting people from all walks of life who also want to make a difference. 

Now you know the basics of Public Appointments, why not take a look and apply? Get in touch if you do, it would be great to follow your journey.