Many universities are struggling to find the right people to fill business-related vacancies that are springing up across the sector, a Times Higher investigation has revealed.

Government initiatives and financial constraints are forcing universities to create a variety of non-academic posts, including research-costing experts and fundraisers. But with all institutions fishing in the same small pool of candidates - often outside the higher education sector - many of these vital positions remain unoccupied.

Fundraising is one area in which universities are having particular difficulties. The government-commissioned Thomas report on university endowments, published in May, called for institutions to adopt a more professional approach to raising money, prompting a rash of new posts.

David Allen, chair of the Association of Heads of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Administrators and registrar at Exeter 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, said: "There is an excess of demand over supply and universities are increasingly turning to headhunters to try to find fundraisers."

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He added: "Headhunters used to be just for the very top jobs."

The government push for institutions to identify and recover the full economic costs of their research, meanwhile, has also generated a need for difficult new appointments. Peter Townsend, research manager at Loughborough 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, said that his university was finding it harder than expected to appoint a costing and pricing officer to meet the Government's requirements. He said: "We are looking for an accountant as well as someone who understands the research process - that's a tough combination of skills to find."

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Increasingly, human resource departments are considering people with no experience of the university sector to fill their gaps. Ray Lewis, personnel director at Manchester 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ, said: "We have got very ambitious strategic objectives that are mostly dependent on attracting high-quality people. In that respect we are no different from M&S or Tesco."

But some posts slot less easily into the private-sector mould.

Knowledge-transfer manager posts, an increasingly problematic area for universities, are often filled by people with a contract-research background and limited knowledge of the business world.

Philip Graham, executive director of the Association of 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ Research and Industry Links, said: "Ideally a knowledge-transfer person has to have a mixture of knowledge, including marketing, contracts, intellectual property, business and finance. Finding that is very difficult."

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He added: "We are finding that you have to get people with just some of those skills and try to train them."

anna.fazackerley@thes.co.uk