What are the steps you need to take when recruiting?
Plan Carefully
When trying to attract the right candidate and to comply with employment law recruitment should be planned carefully.
Getting things right at the recruitment stage will help you to provide a fair and consistent recruitment experience for all applicants and will avoid issues arising later, if the employee selected is not suitable for the position they were employed for.
Key points to consider when recruiting
The key stages of the recruitment and selection process are:
- Planning
- Advertising
- Interview selection
- Interview
- Appointment.
Right to Work in the UK
An employer will need to obtain proof that a job applicant has the right to work in the UK when recruiting. If the employer does not check that the person they appoint is allowed to work in the UK, they could be fined up to £20,000
Avoid Discriminating
Anti-discrimination laws must be complied with, before and after the employment relationship begins to ensure that the recruitment process does not discriminate and is fair.
It is possible to discriminate, even inadvertently, for example, when:
- Writing the job description and person specification
- Advertising for the role
- Selecting the candidate for interview
- Conducting the interview
- Deciding who to appoint.
Job descriptions and person specifications
The employer when writing the job description must ensure that the job description specification matches the requirement to perform the role. For example, a requirement for a candidate to be “Young and energetic” could potentially be age-related discrimination.
There are some instances where an employer might be able to prove an applicant needs a certain protected characteristic such as a person’s sex, race or religion, to do a particular job. For example, a women’s shelter might require female staff to provide a safe space for residents.
Advertising jobs
Job adverts should give clear, accurate information about the organisation and the role and be open to a wide range of people and be advertised in more than one place to attract a broad spectrum of candidates. Employers must take care not to include any terms in the job advert that could unfairly disadvantage an applicant due to a protected characteristic, such as using gender specific terms, for example Waitress or Handyman.

Shortlisting
The purpose of shortlisting is to select the strongest individuals for an interview, objectively and fairly assessing each applicant against the essential job role criteria in the person specification.
All selections should be done in a non-discriminatory manner. If an employer takes personal characteristics into account when shortlisting, discrimination legislation could be applied.
Here are some examples of personal characteristics that could give rise to conscious or unconscious bias:
- The applicant’s name
- Where they live
- The school or university they attended
- Their age, if given
- Their marital status.
Blind Shortlisting
Redacting all personal information from the application, enables recruiting managers to focus on applicants’ specific qualifications, skills, abilities and experience.
Blind and systematic processes for reviewing applications will help improve the chances of including the most relevant candidates in the interview pool.
Reasonable adjustments
The application stage should not discriminate, candidates may require reasonable adjustments to apply for the job. If a candidate is dyslexic, asking them to apply in their own handwriting may discriminate if handwritten English is not crucial to the role applied for.
Employers should not ask candidates if they have a disability as it is against the law but should ask whether any reasonable adjustments are required during the recruitment process. This should be specified in the job adverts and asked when inviting the candidate to an interview.
A reasonable adjustment for an interview could involve a change in location, re-arranging interview times if a parent must collect children from school, arranging for a signer or an interpreter to attend the interview or adjustments for any required tests.
Interviewing
To reduce the risk of discrimination, interviews should be carried out by more than one person. Prepare interview questions that directly relate to areas detailed in the job description.
Standardise the interview by asking the same set of prepared questions to each candidate and by having a predetermined scale to grade the candidate’s response to the questions, helps to minimise bias. The presence of a scoring system is very important to ensure objective decisions.
Interviewers should not ask the candidate any personal questions, such as if they are married or if they have a disability, as this could give rise to a potential discrimination claim.
Clear and concise notes help interviewers to recall a candidate’s answers, but they should only contain the answer’s main points and not the interviewer’s opinions.
Following all interviews, the panel should then evaluate the best candidate for the role after evaluation of their scores and keep a written record of why the decisions were made.
Safer Recruitment
The overall purpose of safer recruitment is to help identify and deter or reject individuals who are deemed to be at risk of exploiting, harming or abusing children, young people and vulnerable adults.
Every advert for a role that includes work with children, young people and vulnerable adults should include a statement about your commitment to keeping children, young people and vulnerable adults safe. If the role requires a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, this should be included in the job advert. This is the first opportunity to send out a clear safeguarding message.
Vetting Process
Identity of the successful candidate must be checked by the Employer during the recruitment process, and they should provide the details of at least two referees. The references should be checked as part of the vetting process. If a candidate has been resident overseas for three months or more over the past five years, an employer should check the candidate’s criminal record in that country. The Home Office provides guidance on applying for criminal records checks for overseas applicants.
When making an offer of employment make it clear that the offer is still subject to the satisfactory completion of all the vetting processes that need to be undertaken, because withdrawing an unconditional offer of employment may result in a claim.
Documents and data
Under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), an employer must explain to job applicants what they will do with their personal data. This covers information gathered during the recruitment and selection process, for example, information in application forms or CVs, as well as any documents copied for right to work checks. Anyone involved in the recruitment process should handle any personal information gathered securely.
From the advertising stage, an applicant privacy notice should be available to job applicants covering how their personal data is processed during an active recruitment process, and what happens at the end of that process with the personal data of both unsuccessful and successful applicants.
Information should not be shared with any other organisations without the individual’s consent.