Last reviewed: 6 October 2026. Applies to recruitment in England and Wales.
This guide is for employers planning a recruitment process. It follows the decisions you need to make, from defining the role to recording the outcome. Legal requirements, recommended practice and fictional examples are labelled separately. It is general information; obtain advice on a disputed decision, an uncertain employment status or a proposed exception to the usual discrimination rules.
1. Define the role, criteria and working arrangements
Legal requirement: Recruitment must comply with the Equality Act 2010. Criteria and arrangements must not unlawfully discriminate, and employers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants where required.
Recommended practice: Write the actual duties first. For each requirement, state why it matters, whether it is essential on appointment or can be learned, and how you will assess it. Replace “confident personality” with an observable requirement such as explaining booking information clearly. Agree the hours, location, reporting line and proposed pay before advertising. Our job-description guide provides a completed administrator example and an editable outline.
Example: An administrator needs to enter booking details accurately and identify a clash. Experience with your particular booking software could be desirable if you provide training. Requiring five years with that software would exclude applicants without explaining what the job actually needs.
Check the proposed employment status
Legal point: The landmark case of Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5 in the UK Supreme Court had significant implications for gig economy workers’ rights, clarifying the application of statutory worker protections. Despite Uber’s stance that its drivers were self-employed contractors, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the claimant drivers were workers, entitled to minimum wage and paid annual leave. The Court focused on the practical working relationship and Uber’s control, rather than treating the contractual description as decisive. Worker status does not necessarily mean employee status.
Action: Before advertising a self-employed arrangement, check how the work will operate in practice, including control and personal service. Do not copy a contractor agreement solely to avoid employment rights. Seek advice if the proposed terms and day-to-day relationship do not agree.
2. Advertise the actual job
Legal requirement: An advert must not state or imply unlawful discrimination. Requirements such as “recent graduate” can exclude people because of age unless there is a valid job-related justification. Your choice of advertising channel can also create discrimination risks. See GOV.UK’s recruitment guidance.
Recommended practice: Publish clear duties, essential and desirable criteria, pay, location, working arrangements, closing date and selection stages. Give a contact for adjustment requests. Check that an agency uses the same approved criteria.
Example: Replace “young, energetic administrator wanted” with “administrator to manage room bookings, respond to enquiries and maintain accurate attendance records”. Then state the working hours and any genuinely necessary on-site duties. This gives applicants useful information about the work.
3. Assess applications against agreed evidence
Legal requirement: Selection must not unlawfully discriminate. A scoring sheet supports a reasoned decision but does not make an irrelevant criterion lawful.
Recommended practice: Agree criteria and scoring descriptions before seeing applications. Record the evidence behind each score and apply the same method to everyone, with appropriate adjustments. Acas recommends a consistent selection process based on the job description and person specification. Avoid casual searches of applicants’ personal social-media accounts.
A small selection matrix
Fictional example: For the administrator role, the panel assesses the same three tasks for each candidate. Its scale is 0 = no relevant evidence, 1 = partial evidence with an important gap, 2 = meets the stated requirement. The descriptions below explain what “meets” means; the score alone is not the record.
| Criterion | Evidence sought | Candidate evidence and score |
|---|---|---|
| Accurate booking records — essential | Enter date, room and attendee details correctly; identify a clash in a short exercise. | Entered all supplied details correctly and flagged the duplicate room booking. 2/2. |
| Clear written replies — essential | Draft a reply that answers the enquiry and states the next action. | Answered the room-capacity question but omitted how to confirm the booking. 1/2. |
| Use of our booking system — desirable | Explain relevant use of the named system; training is available. | No experience of this system; described using a different booking tool. 0/2 for this specific criterion. |
Decision: The score is 3/6, but the panel must apply the thresholds and weighting agreed beforehand. Here it required 2/2 on each essential criterion, so this candidate has not met the written-reply requirement. The missing desirable software experience is not the reason. Do not change thresholds after seeing who applied or let desirable points compensate for a failed essential requirement unless that was part of a justified, stated assessment method.
Positive action and appointment decisions
Case example: In Furlong v Chief Constable of Cheshire Police, case number 2405577/2018, the employment tribunal found that the police force’s recruitment process, designed to improve diversity by favouring certain groups, resulted in discrimination against a white, heterosexual male candidate. The force could not treat all candidates who passed an interview as equally qualified and then apply a blanket preference based on protected characteristics.
Legal conditions: To rely on the recruitment tie-break provision in section 159 of the Equality Act 2010, the employer must reasonably think that the relevant group suffers a disadvantage connected to a protected characteristic or is underrepresented in the activity. The favoured candidate must be as qualified as the other candidate, the action must be proportionate, and there must not be a policy of automatically favouring that group. This case illustrates the importance of applying those conditions carefully, rather than treating positive action as a general permission for preferential hiring. See also Acas’s explanation of positive action, disability exceptions and occupational requirements.
If software screens, ranks or rejects applicants
Legal requirement: Where a recruitment decision with legal or similarly significant effects is made solely by automated means, the UK GDPR requires safeguards for candidates: information about the decision and opportunities to make representations, obtain human intervention and contest it. Additional restrictions apply where such a decision is based wholly or partly on special category data.
Automation checklist: Complete this before using a tool, and revisit it when the tool or selection process changes. The ICO’s Recruitment rewired report brings together its findings on automated recruitment. For the legislative changes, see its explanation of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
- Map where the tool filters, scores, ranks or rejects a candidate. A human decision at the end does not necessarily remove earlier automated decisions.
- Identify and document the lawful basis, data used, recipients and retention arrangements. Check the vendor’s actual role rather than relying on a general claim of compliance.
- Where you rely on human involvement, give reviewers enough information, training, time and authority to reconsider the result. A routine approval click is not meaningful review. See the ICO’s guidance on human involvement.
- Assess relevance, accessibility and discriminatory effects. A vendor’s description of a tool as objective is not evidence that your use of it is fair.
- Complete a data protection impact assessment before processing likely to create a high risk to applicants’ rights and freedoms. Record the risks and measures taken.
- Explain the process to candidates and test the route for requesting review. Assign someone to handle a challenge and record the outcome.
Example: If an application tool rejects a candidate before a recruiter can see their application, checking only the later interview shortlist will miss that decision. Review the early rejection stage, its criteria and the safeguards available to the rejected applicant.
4. Arrange interviews and adjustments
Legal requirement: Pre-offer questions about health or disability are restricted by section 60 of the Equality Act, subject to statutory exceptions. These include assessing participation and recruitment adjustments, an intrinsic job function with reasonable adjustments considered, diversity monitoring, permitted positive action and certain occupational requirements. National-security vetting has a separate provision. The government guide explains the exceptions. They are not a general permission to request medical history.
Example — recruitment adjustment: “The assessment includes a written exercise and a video interview. Do you need any adjustments to take part?” Keep the discussion focused on access and the arrangements needed.
Example — inappropriate general screening: “How many days were you off sick last year?” Do not include this as a routine pre-offer interview question. Sickness-absence questions concern health; asking every candidate does not remove the restriction.
Recommended practice: Explain the format in advance, agree adjustments and keep adjustment information separate from scoring evidence. Ask comparable job-related questions, while allowing follow-ups to clarify an answer. Record what the candidate said or demonstrated, rather than impressions such as “not our type”.
After an offer: Health enquiries are not subject to the same pre-offer restriction, but discrimination law, reasonable-adjustment duties and data-protection requirements still apply. A health condition is not an automatic reason to withdraw an offer.
5. Make appropriate checks and a clear offer
Legal requirement: Check an employee’s right to work before employment starts, using an accepted method and keeping the required evidence. Apply checks consistently rather than making assumptions from a name or nationality. Follow the current Home Office checking instructions and employer guide; the appropriate route depends on the evidence and circumstances.
Legal requirement: Check which criminal-record disclosure, if any, is appropriate and permitted for the role. More detailed DBS checks are limited to eligible roles. Do not treat a spent conviction as grounds for refusal where the role is not covered by a relevant exception. See GOV.UK’s guidance on applicant checks.
Recommended practice: Put the offer in writing and identify any conditions, such as satisfactory references or required checks. State pay, hours, location, start date and a contact for questions. An accepted offer can have contractual consequences; do not assume it can be withdrawn freely. Acas explains job offers and the requirement for a written statement of employment particulars.
Example: A conditional offer should name the outstanding check, who arranges it and how the applicant will be told the result. “Subject to our usual checks” leaves the applicant unable to tell what is still required.
Keep the reason for the starting salary
Recommended practice: Record the salary range and the job-related reason for the agreed starting point. Check equal-pay and discrimination obligations before approving differences.
Relevant finding: The EHRC’s BBC investigation, published in 2020, concerned equal pay for equal work, not gender pay gap reporting. It found no unlawful pay discrimination in the cases analysed, but identified record-keeping, communication and complaint-handling shortcomings. For recruitment, the practical lesson is to retain and explain the reason for a pay decision.
6. Handle candidate data and retain useful records
Legal requirement: Employers must identify and document an appropriate lawful basis for processing and provide clear information about how candidates’ data will be used throughout the recruitment process. Explicit consent is not generally required, and consent may be inappropriate where candidates do not have a genuine free choice. Special category data, such as health or ethnicity information, requires an additional condition under Article 9 of the UK GDPR.
Action: Record the purpose, data needed, lawful basis, access permissions, retention period and deletion process. Separate equality-monitoring and adjustment information from the material used to score applications. Give applicants a clear privacy notice and a contact for data-rights requests.
Example: Keep a dated selection note saying which essential criterion was not met and the evidence assessed. Do not add unrelated opinions or copy private social-media material “just in case”. If you want to retain an unsuccessful applicant’s details for future vacancies, assess and explain that separate purpose.
Legal requirement: Keep personal data secure and no longer than necessary, taking account of applicable record-keeping obligations. Use a documented retention policy rather than one indefinite period for every record. The data-protection principles apply to interview notes and spreadsheets as well as recruitment software.
Future changes: check commencement dates
Future changes: The Employment Rights Act 2025 is also being implemented in phases. Under the government’s current implementation timetable, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal protection is due to fall to six months for dismissals from 1 January 2027. Rights to guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts and short-notice payments are planned for 2027. Employers should review the implications for contracts and recruitment planning, while checking commencement dates because future timings may change.
These future measures do not postpone existing equality or data-protection duties. Recruitment automation already needs legal assessment, appropriate information for candidates and applicable safeguards.
Before opening the vacancy
- Approve the duties, assessable criteria and actual working arrangements.
- Agree the evidence, scoring method and decision-makers before applications arrive.
- Test the application and adjustment-request routes, including any automated stages.
- Prepare the privacy information, offer conditions and proportionate checks.
- Assign responsibility for selection records, applicant queries and future legal reviews.
