What are the rules on having to advertise a job?

[Illumanting]

So, if someone had been doing a job for several months on a temporary basis, and due to decisions made elsewhere in the organisation it could now be permanent, what are the rules on advertising? Or is it acceptable to simply make the temporary person permanent? Public sector, but not a council or NHS.

It needs to be advertised.

There are a few (rare) exceptions (the only one I've come across in RL being the need to appoint the holder of a particular patent), but generally it is more important in making a permanent appointment, as there is flexibility (eg time pressure) when appointing a temp. Of course, if there was a full recruitment procedure for the temp appointment, I can see the temptation to try to do without it now, especially if you have a bar on external recruitment and a limited (and well known) internal candidate pool.

It doesn't need to be advertised legally, no post does, however a public sector organisation may well have an internal policy that requires advertising.

Thanks. It must be that we don't have such a policy.

Depends where you are OP

It should be easy to check the internal policy on recruitment OP.

There are things you can't specify in the ad though. Age, gender and length of experience spring to mind.

Private Sector don't need to advertise externally but I think most public sector do. My DH works in a University and they have to advertise externally, my Mum is a teacher in Scotland and they have to advertise externally.

Public sector jobs do not have to be advertised externally. This may well be a policy within a particular organisation but isn't a legal requirement. I work in the public sector and so a lot of hiring, sometimes we advertise internally only.

It was more that I was surprised they didn't need to advertise internally.

Have you checked the policy OP? Do you know they didn't need to advertise internally? There's no legal requirement to as I said, but I would expect public sector organisations to at least require internal advertisement of vacancies.

On the other hand, this may not be seen as a vacancy by the recruitment policy, just as a change to terms and conditions.