An applicant was successful at the interview stage, offered the role on a Friday and told an answer was needed by Monday and two hours later was contacted by the recruiting manager (HT) to say the offer had been withdrawn due to the the applicant sounding unsure when they were initially offered the role. To make matters worse the recruiting manager informed the applicant that another applicant was offered the role. Applicant has now put in a complaint.
Where do we stand?
To add to that but slightly different
Many years ago when i was a recruiter we had a candidate verbally offered a role by a manager in interview late on a Friday, he went home and immediately resigned from his job. On Monday the HR department then said all recruitment had been put on hold that day by HQ in US (message sent post uk closing on the friday night) and so no formal offer would be forthcoming and the line manager had no legal standing to make a job offer anyway, it had to come from HR.
He couldn't rescind his resignation (he had accepted a company voluntary resignation scheme that was in place alongside redundancies) so he went to court and got 1 months money which is what the notice period would have been, plus a small uplift.
Magistrate made it clear in his view the verbal offer/verbal acceptance and then action of a resignation meant a contract was in force and the HR issued paper contract would just have been formalising it. The uplift was because he thought the HR representative in court was being petty trying to say the manager couldn't make a binding job offer !
