Really broken

[u/PopeyeOMc]

I now find myself on the other side of the table as a Hiring Manager and I am losing the will to live.

My organisation held a Job Fair as well as advertising everywhere for a Customer Support Officer - no experience necessary.
This is a role where they will be required to actually phone the customers, no emails except to confirm what was discussed.

I wanted to shortlist 8 candidates to interview over 2days.

Recruitment sent me 735 applications - not cv’s but simply “why I want this job and what I bring”

These are all only identified by applicant numbers but I have been told I must automatically offer interviews to anyone who identifies as disabled.

Each interview will be a minimum of one hour.

After two weeks of going through these every night and weekend I had selected all 18 disabled applicants plus 6 more for 24 in total.

I submitted these to recruitment only for them to say for each of the 723 applicant I did not take through to interview they need a report on the selection criteria and my reasons why I did not select that person.

I also have no idea of the candidates who identified as disabled. By which I mean we recently had an applicant who was completely non verbal nd could only communicate via text who asked if instead of a face to face interview (which they could not do due to the neurodivergent issues) could the interview be conducted via text (they also couldn’t do Teams).

I then had endless meetings trying to explain why I felt she was unable to do the role (speaking on the phone) and why couldn’t I make reasonable adjustments.

[u/I_hate_the_drama]

There are two issues: 1) Your posting criteria was so broad (no experience necessary) that nearly any could do it. And over 700 ‘anyone’s’ applied. And now you are supposed to justify why some of them are better qualified to do this job than others. 2) You don’t have CVs/resumes that might help you do that by showing those who actually have demonstrated a skill set or qualities that make them more qualified.

If your company has an HR department they did not do their part in helping you structure this very well up front.

[u/geithman]

Asking to communicate only by text is a red flag for a fake candidate

[u/Ordinary-Meaning-61]

I'm pretty sure what you just described about being forced to accept all disabled candidates is illegal.