Q&A - must every job vacancy be advertised?
Q. We recently hired someone for a job vacancy based on a personal recommendation. One of our employees is now insisting that all of our job vacancies must be advertised externally. Is this correct?
A. There’s no legal obligation to advertise a job vacancy in either a particular way, e.g. externally, or in any way at all. You are also free to offer someone a vacant job role, or a job role that you are creating, based on word-of-mouth recruitment practices. This can include personal recommendations, informal discussions and introductions by existing/former staff members. It’s important to bear in mind that word-of-mouth recruitment practices can backfire as the Equality Act 2010 states that employers “must not discriminate against a person in the arrangements (they make) for deciding to whom to offer employment” .
“Arrangements” in this context includes job ads. So, if you don’t advertise a job vacancy at all, or do so in a way that means the opportunity won’t reach people with certain protected characteristics, e.g. age, sex or disability, it could prompt an indirect discrimination allegation. However, in order to succeed, a complainant would have to show there was a clear and disproportionate effect on those with a particular protected characteristic and they were genuinely interested in the job role.
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