By George S. Azadian
An applicant opens an assessment, reaches a question they cannot access and looks for help. The only contact is a vendor support form. By the time someone replies, the deadline has passed and the recruitment system has marked the application unsuccessful.
For the hiring team, that may look like an ordinary dropout. For the applicant, it was a closed door. The difference matters: a record showing that someone did not finish a test does not explain why they stopped, or whether the test gave them a fair chance to demonstrate the skills the job requires.
This is a hypothetical example, but it exposes a practical question for employers using automated recruitment: what happens when a candidate cannot get through the process as designed?
Find out what the unfinished assessment actually tells you
Consider a second hypothetical. A customer-service applicant uses a screen reader, but part of an online assessment depends on dragging objects across a screen. The applicant reports the problem before the deadline. The recruiter sees an incomplete score and assumes the person was not serious about the role.
That conclusion runs ahead of the evidence. The first question should be whether the assessment worked for that applicant. The next is what the exercise was intended to measure. If the role requires understanding customer problems, does dragging an object reveal that ability, or is it simply how the software happens to collect an answer?
An alternative assessment should preserve a fair test of the relevant skill. It should not automatically mean abandoning the requirement or giving someone an easier task. A recruiter needs enough information to separate the skill being assessed from the mechanics of the assessment.
Put the help route where candidates can use it
A support address buried in a privacy notice is unlikely to help someone facing a countdown timer. Explain, before the assessment starts, how to report an access problem or request an alternative. Offer a contact route that does not depend on completing the problematic stage.
Someone on the employer’s side should own those messages. Vendor support can investigate a fault, but the hiring team still needs to decide what happens to the application while that investigation is open.
Agree in advance who can pause a deadline, reopen a stage or arrange another way to demonstrate the relevant skill. Otherwise, a reasonable request can sit between two inboxes while an automatic rejection proceeds exactly as configured.
Give the reviewer something useful to review
“A human can look at it” sounds reassuring. It means little if the reviewer can see only a red status label and has no authority to change the outcome.
The review should bring together the requirement being assessed, the candidate’s account of the problem, the assessment status and the options available. The reviewer should be able to ask whether the recorded outcome reflects the candidate’s ability or a barrier in the process.
UK employers should consult the Information Commissioner’s Office’s current work on automation in recruitment when assessing their arrangements. Its findings address meaningful human involvement and the need to apply it consistently within a hiring stage. That is a UK regulatory context, separate from the U.S. disability-law example below.
Keep a useful record without collecting unnecessary detail
Record when the problem was reported, the stage affected, who took responsibility and what action followed. Keep the relevant assessment criteria and enough information about the version used to investigate the event later.
Avoid turning a request for help into an invitation to collect an applicant’s full medical history. Information should be limited to what is needed for the relevant process, with appropriate access controls. The ICO’s recruitment AI considerations emphasise fairness, data minimisation and clear explanations of how candidate information is used.
Useful records also distinguish an automated status from a reviewed decision. “Assessment incomplete” and “application reviewed following reported access problem” describe different events. A hiring record should allow a later reader to see that difference.
A U.S. perspective, clearly separated
For employers covered by the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act, disability-related access to recruitment assessments can raise accommodation obligations. The EEOC’s guidance on visual disabilities specifically discusses software and algorithmic tools that may screen out applicants who can perform the job with or without reasonable accommodation.
That is U.S. federal guidance, relevant to covered employers including those in California; it is not a statement of the rules governing UK employers. California employers also need to consider applicable state requirements. The shared operational question is narrower: did the recruitment process assess the person’s suitability, or did an inaccessible step prevent that assessment from happening?
Check the applications that disappear
Recruitment teams routinely examine who reaches interview. They should also look at where people leave the process. Repeated incomplete assessments at the same stage deserve investigation, particularly when candidates have reported similar difficulties.
Test the help route itself. Send a realistic access query, check who receives it and see whether the application can be protected from automatic closure while a response is arranged. A published policy is useful only if the people operating the system can carry it out.
Automation can organise a large applicant pool. It should also leave room to recognise when the process has failed. Before treating an unfinished screening step as a reason to reject someone, make sure there is a workable route to find out what happened.
Author bio
George S. Azadian is a California employment attorney and President of Azadian Law Group, PC. His practice focuses on representing employees in workplace disputes, including wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation and wage-and-hour matters.
“Before treating an unfinished screening step as a reason to reject someone, make sure there is a workable route to find out what happened.”
George S. Azadian, President, Azadian Law Group, PC — excerpt from this article
Image: editorial illustration created for Onrec.
