Remote job but employer asking for face to face interview?

[Seawitchandgarden]

I just wondered what are people's thoughts/experience with this.

Due to health issues/a disability I have been applying only for remote roles or local roles that don't require the use of public transport. I made it clear in my job applications/the equal opportunities that I am disabled.

I was offered an interview for a role advertised as remote with a charity yesterday but this is a face to face interview.

The interview is in a random location which I assume was hired for the day and it would take me almost two hours each ways of travel, be costly and they are not offering any support with transport costs.

I am a bit baffled by this. What is the point of a face to face interview when you are not even inviting the candidate to your offices to meet the team or see your work environment and when the role is fully remote?

I have replied to point out my disability and request a Zoom interview instead.

So far crickets...

Ah well, experiences differ. I guess sometimes I forget how shitty many organisations are!

It is not normal to offer to pay for transport costs. I have never offered when recruiting nor been offered when job hunting. I have only ever worked for commercial profit-making firms who are good employers that offer job security and benefits. I doubt charities have better financial resources.

Government schemes such as Access to Work may help with transport costs for interviews as that is not the prospective employer's costs.

Paying money upfront without knowing who or what they are is asking to be scammed. People could just take the money and not turn up.

Yes, we'll have to agree to differ on this one. For the many reasons already given on this thread, it's not standard practice for this type of role.

Of course you can't take any money - expenses are claimed AFTER attendance.
It's normally limited to just mileage or standard rail.

I think I'm just used to a different approach, where they want the right person.

What I said was it is poor - you said it was normal not to pay, I said that didn't make it good.

There are better organisations, with better approaches.

This sounds sophisticated but I am not sure I follow how the scam works.

Was the candidate interviewing for a position at your company which will give them privileged admin access. So once in, they steal data and confi info? That is standard insider threat/infiltration. You'd hope the interview questions and references will screen for that.

So where does asking about questions about things like delivery of their IT equipment fit into this scam? They arrange for IT equipment to be delivered to the office and then what? They presumably still have to pay for it?

We do hybrid working but insist on face to face interviews aa you can get a better feel of the person. We ask of anyone with disabilities require any adjustments but we wouldn't pay for anything.
As a one off are you not able to put yourself out or try and ask a friend or family member to help you get there?

Sure.

I guess the right person for many jobs tend to be people who are fairly local because they have to come into the office a couple of days a week. If they cannot afford to come in for an interview, they live too far to be suitable (or recompensed for travel).

Nobody knows who is the 'right person' until they are interviewed, so it is a bit chicken and egg, especially when the reimbursement is after the fact.

If the candidate was not the 'right person', then they won't be reimbursed? Or the company reimburses every candidate who is interviewed? I have never come across this but maybe it is specific to a certain sector.

Great - let's hope the OP finds one as this one isn't going to pay (and neither will many others).

It's a remote role.

One of the advantages of a remote role is your potential pool is national, so paying expenses would be wise to take advantage of that.

If you want someone local, that's a different scenario.

I was thinking that, if OP's been invited for an interview but the invitation were to be rescinded due to her incapacity to mobilise, she'd be a victim of discrimination, wouldn't she? Does anyone know for definite?

This is why I recommended using the term 'reasonable adjustment'. It's a way of signposting the Equality Act without sounding like a litigious nightmare.

Could access to work cover the travel costs to make it an equitable chance to interview?

Wow, I must be lucky as I had a remote interview and got the fully remote role 🤷‍♀️

Access to work could be one option here - although the OP says that she is simply unable to travel at all using public transport due to her disability, so I don't think that would work for her.

I think that’s tricky. If they’re asking all candidates to attend an in person interview, and there’s a good operational reason why a remote interview isn’t appropriate I think it would be difficult to claim discrimination.

While a remote interview could be a reasonable adjustment, so could paying travel costs or arranging an in person interview at a closer location. In reality I suspect if they consider it to be too much hassle at interview stage, they’ll find they have a better (easier) candidate to appoint at interview.

I see.

Return train tickets cross country can cost quite a lot. As remote roles are desirable and tap such a wide pool, I don't think an employer would have trouble filling the role with the right person even if they don't pay transport costs.

Sometimes it is good to put a hurdle like travelling out for face-to-face interview to test how keen and committed the candidate is.

If the candidate cites costs as an issue and this is a candidate with niche skills in a hard to fill role, then it makes sense for the employer to offer to pay the costs of travel for that candidate. But not every single candidate that that employer interviews.

I accept that some businesses want to transfer costs wherever possible, but this Sometimes it is good to put a hurdle like travelling out for face-to-face interview to test how keen and committed the candidate is is not good for individuals nor is it good for social mobility.

I'm pretty pfft about 'demonstrate how keen and committed the candidate is' - how about the business demonstrates how keen and committed they are to attracting the best people?

They could pay for a private accessiblr taxi with assistance as needed?!

Yes, I understand that but I think that if we were interviewing a disabled candidate who had stated mobility issues, pretty sure that we would arrange to travel to facilitate a local interview to avoid falling foul of DDA

I think @Jellycatspyjamas and @blueshoes are demonstrating prejudice.

The non-travelling candidate has applied for a remote role because she can't travel. While it's good to meet candidates face-to-face (I'd want to, as well), it's very iffy to exclude the non-traveller in this case and, I would suspect, actionable.

Being able to get to their office by public transport is clearly not a relevant requirement for this job. There are good business reasons for wanting the meeting - but not for wanting the candidate to demonstrate that she can travel.

With the travel expenses problem, candidates are being excluded for not being able to afford the train fare. Access To Work does cover things like this, though I don't know how long it takes to be awarded. It would be wrong to say you didn't want anyone who couldn't easily spare £100+ wouldn't it?

Big companies I've worked for would issue a ticket via their travel department - recipients couldn't get cash refunds on the tickets, so the companies weren't really exposing themselves.

Lifts and taxis have been suggested but the OP didn't respond to them. It's also not clear if her disability prevents her from leaving the house completely, but she's also been looking for local roles that don't need public transport so it suggests she is able to, to some extent.

If you think of venn diagrams, there is a big overlap between keen and committed persons and the best candidates.

If best candidate means person with the most relevant skills but with a poor attitude or rigid views, I would choose the less experienced candidate who shows enthusiasm and a willingness to learn over an experienced but somewhat jaded candidate. With the former, I know I will eventually get a dream employee that I can grow and who will grow with the company. With the latter, there is a risk I will end up with a HR/management problem.

Fairly reasonable to schedule F2F interviews even though the job is remote, to check you are who you say you are, etc. Avoids any tech issues on the day too. I’ve had a few online interviews recently where it was clear the candidate was reading from notes / ChatGPT in a way they would not have been able to do F2F.

Equally you are perfectly within your rights to ask for reasonable adjustments due to your disability. Phone the HR person / recruiter to explain the situation and ask if anything they can do to make it more manageable for you. They may offer online interview in your case.

There’s a good advisory here from the U.K. Govt - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66e2ec410d913026165c3d91/OFSI_Advisory_on_North_Korean_IT_Workers.pdf

The person you are interviewing is a hired shill. They have no intention of ever doing the job or even logging into the device, they apply for IT roles, do the interview, get the job and verify their Identification. Then they’re done. They ask for their IT equipment to be delivered to a different address because they’re in the middle of a house move or away from home when it’s due to arrive or whatever excuse works.

The equipment is then used by the ring running the scam, they install a VPN if they can to mask their location, they attend work meetings with camera off (easy to do in the first few days you just blame teething issues with the new laptop setup) access as many systems as possible, if they can they find ways within the systems to give themselves more access and they steal content.

In the interview we’re also looking for signs of the above and also signs that they’re using AI: unnatural pauses after the question is asked which may suggest they’re waiting for the answer or reading what it’s said, changes in their phrasing, suddenly using terminology that differs to what they used earlier in the conversation, eyes looking away from camera suggesting they’re reading another screen for example.

AI and these kind of scams is making it harder and harder to conduct remote interviews. We’ve had literally hundreds of CVs for some roles, and the CVs are Ai generated, then you speak to them and half the time I may as well be holding the interview direct with chatGPT, if you’re ‘lucky’ the interviewee is good enough at acting that it isn’t obvious, then you add in ID verification challenges and additional risks that doing them remotely brings and it’s no surprise that a lot of remote roles want the interview to happen in person.

I think you might want to go back a read what I wrote.

I said if there were genuine operational reasons for requiring an in person interview it’s unlikely the requirement would be considered discriminatory. I also said there were other actions they could take as reasonable adjustments if they did have operational reasons for the face to face interview. I’d also expect the prospective employer to explain why in person was needed for a remote role. I didn’t say anything about proving the candidate could travel, that’s clearly not an operational requirement for a fully remote role.

I’m not sure what’s discriminatory about any of that.