Legalities of creating and advertising a new role

joho

A new layer of management is being created in my place of work. It feels very much that one person is intended to get the job. This person has been involved in creating the role, drafting the job description, and obviously knew about it long before any other potential candidates, giving them the chance to have been sliming and creeping to the right people.

The new job is not being advertised externally and I'm curious about the legalities of this and the fact that this one person has been so involved in creating the job.

DullGreyGuy

There is no legal requirement for jobs to be advertised at all. You can just appoint someone you want into a role if they are happy to accept. 

Some companies have internal policies that may require all roles to be advertised but you can naturally just pay lip service to that. I had something similar many years ago where I was offered a secondment with a promise it would become perm if it worked out. Well I was told it had worked out but my boss' boss said despite the promise the job would have to be advertised internally and I'd have to apply however if I was successful then any increase in pay would be backdated and my existing secondment would be extended. Needless to say I got the job.

Plasticman

Unless there's some sort of discrimination going on relating to protected characteristics, this is absolutely fine legally.  

TELLIT01

I don't know if it is still the case but at one time organisations in the public sector had to go through the farce of advertising roles externally even if they had an internal candidate lined up for the role.  That is a total waste of resources, time and money.  If an organisation is creating a role, and knows who they want in that role, why BS everybody?

I was actually caught up in just such a situation about 20 years ago.  A job was advertised which required two very particular skill sets, and one which I suspect very few people would have because there was no obvious link between them.  I applied and was shocked to receive a response within a few days informing me that I hadn't been selected for interview.  I then called the HR department who waffled on with various excuses.  When they finished I said I just wanted to ask one question.  That question was "Would I be wrong to think the that job was being filled internally but you had to advertise externally because you are a public body".  The response of "I can't comment on that" spoke volumes.  Had I not been correct it would have been simple for them to say I was wrong.

Grumpy_chap

TELLIT01 said:

I don't know if it is still the case but at one time organisations in the public sector had to go through the farce of advertising roles externally even if they had an internal candidate lined up for the role.  That is a total waste of resources, time and money.  If an organisation is creating a role, and knows who they want in that role, why BS everybody?

It is not just public sector.

I once went for a job role where a new Team was being set up so 6 roles to fill.
Under the premise of creating a versatile team, there were 6 candidates invited to interview from each of 6 "cohorts":
 - Internal candidates
 - External, same industry, sideways move
 - External, same industry, step up
 - External, different industry, sideways move
 - External, different industry, step up
 - Returning to work

On the face of it, a 1 in 6 chance for everyone invited to interview.
The Recruitment Agency did a lot of work to get all the various cohorts filled with, to be fair, a selection of capable candidates.
The interview was a "day workshop" affair, so 36 people all spent the whole day being interviewed.  Plus however many staff from the recruiting organisation.  All in all, an expensive process.
After the interviews, feedback keep getting delayed (which frustrated the Recruitment Agency as much as everybody else - after all, they usually only receive a fee for successful candidates and had put in a lot of effort in this activity.)
Eventually, the feedback was "all 6 roles were filled from the internal candidates".

Absolute waste of time for everyone involved !

So - for the OP - if "person X" is going to get the job regardless, then they might as well just give the job to "person X" and avoid wasting a load of time with any kind of "fair" process.

DullGreyGuy

Without a very candid conversation with the hiring manager you ultimately will never know the truth of it. Sometimes it is just lip service to tick a box because HR or such says you have to but that doesn't sound like a lip service approach to me. 

Sometimes you can honestly be interested in external candidates and it just happens that they aren't better than the internal ones, or at least not better enough to outweigh any value in knowing the company from the inside already etc. 

At times there can be fringe benefits from these things. In a recent piece of work candidates were asked to name the systems they've used and their opinions of them. An external candidate got the job but a list was formed of all the systems mentioned by all the candidates and formed the basis of vendor selection process. I'm fairly sure in some interviews they've just been tapping me for information rather than seriously interviewing for a role. 

Marcon

joho said:

A new layer of management is being created in my place of work. It feels very much that one person is intended to get the job. 

Probably because that's the intention.

joho said:

This person has been involved in creating the role, drafting the job description, and obviously knew about it long before any other potential candidates, giving them the chance to have been sliming and creeping to the right people.

The new job is not being advertised externally and I'm curious about the legalities of this and the fact that this one person has been so involved in creating the job.

Maybe they're the best person for the job.