Eligibility criteria for public sector job

isthisokay

Hello, throwaway account for this discussion and I’m phrasing this question featuring a hypothetical third party. Excuse the length.

John works in a highly specialised job in the public sector. The only way to progress professionally is to apply to a national panel recruitment campaign. These campaigns should be held yearly but often go two or even three years without being held. 

Out of the blue this year, a national recruitment campaign was launched. It stated that candidates must have X years of experience completed by Y date to be eligible. John had X years plus 2 days experience by Y date so he applied. 

However, John got rejected at the shortlisting stage for not meeting the experience requirement. When queried, he was told that it was because of a period of two weeks mandatory self isolation due to the global pandemic that had occurred between John moving from one job abroad in 2020 to a job in Ireland. Thus, the recruitment agent calculated his experience as X years minus 14 days, making him ineligible. 

John challenged this on the basis that he had been told by senior management that he could not start working remotely at his new job as the team were working in the office throughout the pandemic and his start date needed to be when he could attend the office in person. Throughout the two week period, he had been actively liaising with new colleagues and job planning, even though he was not officially in contract yet. He also queried whether he would have been excluded if he had taken the two week period as annual leave from his previous role and was told that the time would have been counted in that instance. The only factor determining his eligibility was whether he was formally within a contract at the time. 

As this two week period was totally out of John’s control, and other applicants are not disadvantaged by time off when within contracts (excluding long term sick leave, maternity leave etc), John feels that he is being treated unfairly compared to other candidates. This has a direct impact on John’s career as he will be unable to pursue career development without being on the panel, and he will be unable to progress professionally for at least another year or two now. 

Is John just particularly unlucky or would there be any legal grounds to challenge this decision on?

Did he have a contract with his new job that covered the two weeks self-isolation?

If not, and he was between contracts, I'd say he's out of luck.

the14thwarrior

it would appear he did not have a contract during this two week period. ergo he does not meet the criteria. senior management cannot promise something if an open compettion states otherwise.

it happened to me when i covered for a colleague in a senior position - there is no acting up jobs anymore, you do the job and get the experience. on paper however i had no title, no contract and therefore did not meet the eligibility criteria;