> and they just hired unqualified candidates!

They're still people with valid medical licenses - the pool of candidates wouldn't have people who couldn't legally practice medicine, so I'd assume the qualification criteria they were being assessed on is unrelated to their ability to not accidentally kill me on the OR table.

> and they just hured unqualified candidates

Hopefully not unqualified, just not the "best" available

As defined by the interview process.

they became qualified by an undocumented component of the interview process

What makes you think they are unqualified?

People get rejected because they are not the best fit, not because they are unfit.

I know what you mean. But reading again the recruitment process was for "third-level specialist training position (ST3)" which I think is the 3rd year of a 5 year training. So everyone was in training, its just that the relative ranking got messed up. Its not like random people could apply. So I guess thats why they decided to honor their (frankly terrible) job offer fuck ups.

> unqualified candidates

While this may be true, (but someone has to be the lowest scoring one - it could've been a group where everyone is great) keep in mind it was a list of candidates who are aware of their lowest scores, getting a training position in a place aware of their lowest scores, with 5 more years ahead of them. It sucks that it happened, but I think they'll be under extreme scrutiny/pressure now.

Not necessarily -- perhaps they'd found 26 suitable candidates, picked ten of them to fill their ten open positions, but accidentally sent offers to all 26.

When 500 people apply for a job with 1 open position, does that immediately make 499 of them unqualified?