Lude Generation

Chucked a few searches into Google and couldn't come up with much. Basically my partner applied for a an internal Job vacancy recently that she really wanted. She had mentioned in the application that she could not complete an interview on the dates we were in Paris.

A few days passed and she then received an email offering her several times to come in for an interview. Funnily enough all the dates and times were when we were in Paris!

So she politely emailed mentioning her original application and whether she could reschedule for early the next week. This was also when she was back to work from our holiday.

Only to be told on her first day back to work that the position had been filled and the lady hiring hadn't received her email response. Yeah right!

What I want to know is, if you offer someone an interview can you hire someone else and justify not giving someone an interview because it was not convenient for the company to wait a few days till my partner was back at work? Or is this all a fairly grey area?

Not too much you can do on that one really I think - unless she's been displaced under restructuring and is at risk of redundancy, in which place she should be given preferential application (that's preferential opportunity for interview, but not preferential guarantee of a job).

Other than that, you could probably challenge it under equal opportunity, but the company would probably be able to cobble together good reasons (valid or otherwise) why they couldn't hold up the interview progress and you'd have to consider whether it's worth the aggro in the long run?

Does her company pay for an independent confidential employee support service like care first? http://www.care-first.co.uk/
if so, they normally do employment law legal advice so you can give them a call and talk through the specifics.

She doesn't want to do anything any who, especially because its internal. If she kicked up a fuss it would only ruin other opportunities if they arise.

Such a shame for her as she's trying to get her foot in the door of a photography role. Hate to see her get knocked back! Just frustrating they weren't prepared to wait a couple of days to actually interview her!

Yeah, it's difficult like that. I've been on both sides of the fence in that situation before.

I'll also look into the employee support thing, would be handy to know. As I mentioned she doesn't want to do anything anyway! Just wanted to see if it's lawful not to interview someone because they were away on holiday for a week

G-lude wrote:Just wanted to see if it's lawful not to interview someone because they were away on holiday for a week

Yep, I don't think that explicit point has been written into employment law tbh

Check your car and home insurance policies. Some have legal expenses cover included, so you could have access to some legal advice under a policy.

It's possible that they could argue that interviews were set for a specific time frame. Just hard luck for anyone not available at that time.
Bummer, though.

I'm with these guys, I'm afraid. Bad luck.

As a BTW, ACAS usually have people you can speak to who can give great employment type advice for free (I've found).

By the sound of it she was better off going on holiday rather than attending the interview. They already knew who was getting the job...