About this desk

What this desk is

The Shortlist Desk writes practical notes on hiring in the United Kingdom. Four sections hold them: Applications, Interviews, Pay and contracts, Sectors and trades. Each note begins with one question a reader asks before or during a job move, answers it in the opening paragraph, and then sets out the detail a reader can jump through. Hiring is machinery, and this desk explains how the machinery works.

Who writes it

The desk writes every note. It reads GOV.UK guidance, Acas codes and advice, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Information Commissioner's Office, HM Revenue and Customs, the Health and Safety Executive and the Office for National Statistics, alongside sector bodies, unions and professional institutes. Each note names the sources it read, so a reader can go to the original. Photographs are generated images made for each note and captioned as plates.

How a note is made

A note starts with a single question and a check of what the law and the published guidance actually say. The answer is written first, in British English, with the figures and thresholds a source provides. Then come the sections a reader can jump to, the sources read, and the date the note was checked. When a source changes, the note is revised and its date moves with it. Where the law sets a floor, the note states the floor and says what is negotiated above it.

The sections

Applications follows a document from the advert to the shortlist. Interviews sits in the room, from the first handshake to the offer. Pay and contracts reads the written statement, the payslip and the tax that sits behind both. Sectors and trades goes to the work itself, from a greenkeeping shed in February to a jeweller's bench and a shift handover in a warehouse.