Notifying Applicants of the Job Interview Result: An Obligation on the Establishment, Not a Courtesy

What the Ministry of Human Resources confirmed exactly

The wording the ministry published is clear and specific: failing to notify applicants for vacancies of the job interview result is a violation of the regulations, and non-compliant establishments can be reported through the ministry's application. Note that the ministry did not describe the behavior as unprofessional practice or a reputational issue. It described it expressly as a violation and attached a reporting channel to it. That is a fundamental difference in characterization, and every HR department should register it.

• The obligation falls on the establishment that owns the vacancy, not on the recruitment company or the platform where the advert was published.
• The obligation concerns the result of the job interview, meaning after the applicant has actually been interviewed by the establishment.
• The ministry has given the applicant a reporting channel through its application, so the matter is no longer internal between two parties.
• A reply that rejects the applicant is an acceptable reply. The violation is silence and leaving the applicant with no answer.

Where this obligation sits within the vacancy and interview controls

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development has adopted controls for advertising job vacancies and conducting job interviews, published among the decisions and regulations in the ministry's knowledge centre. Their stated purpose is to regulate and standardize the procedures for advertising vacancies and conducting interviews in the private sector and to raise the quality of the service provided to job seekers. The ministry's notice about replying to applicants sits inside this framework, not outside it.

In this guide we deliberately avoid stating a specific number of days for replying to an applicant, and any other numeric detail circulating on news sites, because any period or figure must be read from the text of the controls published by the ministry itself before it is relied upon in an internal policy. The safe position for the establishment is simpler than all of that: notify everyone you interviewed as soon as the selection decision is approved, and do not wait for a period to run.

• Go back to the text of the controls published by the ministry, and update your internal hiring policy against it rather than against market talk.
• Make the reply to the applicant a mandatory step inside the hiring procedure, so a vacancy cannot be closed in your system before it is completed.
• Assign a named owner for sending the notices, because a task nobody owns is the first thing to drop under pressure.

A documented hiring trail from the advert to the result notice

An establishment that is reported is not asked about its intentions. It is asked what it can prove. The real value is therefore not in sending a regret message, but in having a written trail that starts with the vacancy advert and ends with a record proving that every applicant was interviewed and notified. These six steps build that trail inside a small establishment without an expensive recruitment system.

1. Write the vacancy advert with a clear, specific job description, and keep a copy of the advert and its publication date in the vacancy file.
2. Log applicants in a single sheet carrying the name, contact channel, date the application was received, and the outcome of the initial screening.
3. Send a written interview invitation stating its type, its location or the meeting arrangement, its time, and its expected duration, and keep the invitation.
4. Record a brief minute for each interview containing the date, the names of the interviewers, the assessment criteria used, and the outcome.
5. Have the selection decision approved in writing by the authorized person, because that date is the starting point for the notices, not the end of the month.
6. Send the notice to everyone interviewed, the successful and the unsuccessful alike, and keep the sent copy and proof of receipt in the file.

Two ready wordings: the acceptance notice and the regret notice

A good notice is short, neutral, and easy to file. It needs no lengthy justification, and it must not contain personal judgments about the applicant that could later be used against the establishment. The two wordings below are suitable for sending by email or through a recruitment system, and the bracketed items are replaced with the details of the case.

From the acceptance notice to the signed contract

An acceptance notice is not a contract and does not set the terms of work. The document that moves a candidate from the selection stage to the contracting stage is the offer letter, because it puts the wage, the title, the benefits, the start date, the validity period of the offer, and the conditions attached to it in one document signed by both sides before the contract is drafted. The absence of this letter is the single biggest source of disagreement in the first weeks of employment.

• Offer letter E-05: the wage, the title, the benefits, the start date, the validity period of the offer, and its conditions precedent.
• The employment contract after the offer is accepted: E-01 for a fixed-term contract or E-02 for an indefinite contract, depending on the case.
• Authenticating the contract on the Qiwa platform after signature, a step separate from the agreement between the parties and not a substitute for it.
• Probation annex E-06 if the establishment wants a probation period, bearing in mind that Articles 53 and 54 of the Labor Law cap it at 180 days including any extension, and that it does not apply unless it is stated expressly and in writing.

Applicants' data and CVs under the Personal Data Protection Law

A CV, a mobile number, identity data, and interview notes are all personal data, and the Personal Data Protection Law issued by Royal Decree M/19 and its amendments does not exclude recruitment files. An establishment that keeps hundreds of CVs with no clear basis and no defined retention period accumulates a silent exposure, especially when those files are shared with an external recruitment company or stored on unmanaged cloud tools.

• Tell the applicant the purpose of collecting their data and how long it will be kept before they send it, not afterwards.
• Do not retain an unsuccessful applicant's data for future vacancies except on a clear basis with an express notice.
• Control who can access recruitment files inside the establishment, and do not leave them in a shared folder open to everyone.
• If you use an external recruitment provider, govern the relationship with a data processing agreement instead of undocumented exchanges.

Common mistakes that cost the establishment more than expected

The following mistakes recur in small establishments, and all of them are fixable with a single management decision at negligible cost. What they share is that they leave the applicant with no answer and leave the establishment with no evidence of what it did.

• Relying on the phrase we will contact you if you are selected, making silence the default reply to everyone.
• Replying verbally by phone with no written trace, leaving the establishment nothing to prove that it notified the applicant.
• Delaying the reply until the selected employee actually starts work, so weeks pass with no answer for the remaining applicants.
• Relying on the recruitment company to notify applicants without confirming that it did so and documenting it.
• Sending a regret notice containing a personal assessment or a reason that could be read as discrimination between applicants.
• Closing the vacancy file without keeping the advert, the interview minutes, and copies of the notices in one place.

Frequently asked questions