Aberdeen City Council is trying for a third time to fill a senior officer role at the authority after two failed attempts to find a suitable candidate for the £112,000-a-year post.
A report to the local authority’s urgent business committee yesterday said there have been two unsuccessful efforts to appoint a director of corporate governance.
On both occasions, it said, the hopefuls that made it through to the interview stage were “not of the appropriate standard”.
Chief executive Angela Scott was the last person to hold the role before she was promoted in May last year.
Mrs Scott was in post for six months, following the departure of Stewart Carruth, who was director from 2009-13.
The committee report said that a new strategy has been suggested to make sure the recruitment problems do not happen again.
It said: “What is apparent is that some of the candidates, although meeting the requirements of the job profile on paper, did not match up when tested.
“Therefore, to avoid a further repetition of putting what are clearly unsuitable candidates before the appointment panel, it is proposed to introduce a long listing stage in the recruitment process.”
Rather than short-listing six candidates, it has been recommended that the council short-list up to 10. Those job hopefuls will be interviewed by a panel of senior managers to gauge whether their applications should go forward to the “assessment centre” stage of the process.
It is hoped that will help to weed out “weaker” applicants.
Yesterday, the urgent business committee unanimously agreed to refer the report to a meeting of the council’s finance, policy and resources committee on April 23.
Finance convener Willie Young said councillors were aiming high in terms of the appointment.
He said: “Firstly, I think that we have not had a proper trawl. The agency that we use has not been able to trawl as extensively as we would have liked.
“It is obvious that the candidates that were put forward did not meet the requirements, the high standards that Aberdeen City Council expects.
“Councillors took the brave decision to not appoint anyone twice, but that shows we are not just going to take the first candidate that comes along just because we need someone.”