Playbook, recruitment agency
Two buildings, and one of them is not the agency's
Access questions on most websites concern one address. Here a candidate may mean the branch where they register, the client's premises where the interview happens, or the site where the work is, and the agency owns exactly one of the three. Underneath sits a second kind of message entirely: a request for an adjustment to the process, which is not a fact to look up and belongs with a person.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for accessibility requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The interview and the work both happen on a client's premises, so the agency is being asked about a building it does not own, has often visited once, and cannot make any commitment about.
- A high street branch where temporary workers come in to register has real physical access questions attached to it, while a search firm nobody ever visits has none, and the same page has to know which kind of business it belongs to.
- Registration involves forms, identity documents and in many agencies a short assessment, so an access request here is often about the process rather than about a door or a step.
- Telling an agency about a disability is loaded in a way it is not elsewhere, because the candidate is working out what will be passed to an employer, so the reply has to be clear about who sees what.
How it arrives
- is your branch step free
- the interview is at the client site is it accessible
- can i do my registration online instead of coming in
- i need extra time for the assessment can that be arranged
- will you tell the employer about my disability
- can i bring someone with me when i register
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Physical detail for the branch, written as a route | Which entrance, whether the door is powered, how many steps if there are steps, whether the interview rooms are upstairs and whether there is a lift. A symbol on a contact page tells nobody whether the journey is worth making. |
|---|---|
| What registration involves, and where it can flex | Which parts have to be in person, which can be done remotely, whether there is any assessment and how long each part takes. Most adjustments amount to moving one step, and you cannot offer that if the steps were never written down. |
| What is passed to an employer, and when | What you share with a client, at what point, and what stays with the agency. Say it plainly, because a candidate deciding whether to ask for an adjustment is really deciding this. |
| Who handles adjustment requests, and how quickly | A named route and a response time. A request made the day before a registration appointment has a deadline inside it, and a general enquiries inbox is not where it should land. |
The reply
I can tell you about our own branch, and the entrance and access detail are on our contact page [1]. I cannot tell you anything about a client's building, because those are their premises and not ours, so if your interview is at their site we will check and confirm it with you. If you need something adjusted for registration itself, more time or part of it done remotely, that is a request rather than a question and it needs a person [2]. Leave me your name, an email and what would help and somebody will come back to you.
It separates the two buildings in the first two sentences, because a confident answer about the wrong address is the failure that strands somebody at a door. Offering to check with the client is a promise the agency can actually keep. Naming the adjustment as a request stops the candidate waiting for an answer that was never coming.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks for an adjustment, mentions a condition or a disability, or asks about access at a client site or a place of work.
That is something a person needs to arrange rather than something I can confirm, and anything about a client's building we have to check with them first. Leave your name, an email and what you need and a consultant will sort it out with you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never describe access at a client site or a place of work, because the agency does not control that building and a wrong answer leaves somebody standing outside it.
- Never say an adjustment can be made, since that commits the agency and sometimes a client to something nobody has agreed to.
- Never ask a candidate what their condition is, because the assistant has no reason to hold it and the answer would sit in a chat log.
- Never say what will or will not be passed to an employer beyond what your published policy already states.
Questions
- We are a search firm and nobody visits us. Is this worth a page?
- Yes, but only the process half of it. The questions about doors disappear and the ones about assessments, timescales and what reaches a client remain, and those are the ones candidates find hardest to put to a consultant directly.
- Can it arrange the adjustment?
- No. It cannot book, change or promise anything. It collects the request and sends it to whoever you nominate, which matters here because the request usually has a date attached to it.
- Should it say anything at all about the client's building?
- Only that the agency will find out. Repeating what a consultant remembers from a site visit is how a wheelchair user arrives at a building with a step and a heavy door and no one to open it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling accessibility requests in generalTwo different things arrive as one message. A published accessibility statement answers the first. The second is a request, and it needs a person.
- The lockout that costs somebody a week's payA temp who cannot log in on the evening of the cut off has a deadline, not an inconvenience. What an assistant can honestly do about it.
- Which login is it, and which address is sitting on itA candidate area, a timesheet system and a client approval login all look alike from outside. Getting the reset pointed at the right one.
- What an assistant may say about how candidate data is heldProcurement wants to know how a recruiter stores identity documents and worker records. Only published answers, because each one is a commitment.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.