UK GDPR CANDIDATE PRIVACY POLICY

Purpose

MARCH® is a “controller” in relation to personal data. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us (whether as an employee, worker or
contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:

•  Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
•  Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
• Accurate and kept up to date.
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
• Kept securely

The kind of information we hold about you

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter including:
  • your name, address and contact details
  •  your gender
  • your education and qualifications
  • your academic and professional qualifications
  • your skills, experience and membership of professional bodies
  • your National Insurance Number
• Evidence of your ability to work in the UK, your nationality and immigration status
• Information provided from your previous employer(s) and other referees
• Any information you provide to us during an interview.

We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.
• Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)/Security Clearance

How is your personal information collected?

We may collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

• You, the candidate
• Recruitment partners (including subscribed online CV Databases), from which we collect the following categories of data: employment history, qualifications, contact information, association membership information, right to work information and any other reasonable information as part of the application and recruitment process
• Background check provider, from which we collect the following categories of data: employment history, address history – should the role require it (security checking etc)
•  Credit reference agency, from which we collect the following categories of data: financial (should the role require such a level of checking)
• Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions

How we will use information about you

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the work
• Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable
• Communicate with you about the recruitment process
• Keep records related to our hiring processes
• Comply with legal or regulatory requirements

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.

We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

We need to process evidence of your nationality, immigration status, ability to work in the UK, your NI to comply with our legal obligations.

Having received your personal data we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and/or carry out a criminal record and/or carry out any other check before confirming your appointment.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a credit check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

• We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during a test or interview. This processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights under employment law.
• We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
• We may also need to process your special category personal information in cases where a claim has been brought against us, or we are in a legal dispute. In such circumstances this processing is necessary for the for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

Information about criminal convictions

We envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.

We will collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We will only collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so.

Where we are entitled to carry out a criminal records check this will be in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role. We will only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, namely, preventing or detecting unlawful acts, protecting the public against dishonesty, safeguarding, preventing fraud or suspicion of terrorism or money laundering.

Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests)and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Data sharing

Why might you share my personal information internally or with third parties?

Your personal data will be held by the HR department, the payroll department and the Recruitment Department. Your personal data will be shared internally with other individuals and/or departments where this is reasonably necessary for the processing purposes set out in section 2 above. For example, HR will need to share your personal data with the department whose vacancy you have applied for.

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application. We will only do so where we have a legitimate or legal basis for doing so and an in compliance with our obligations under data protection law.

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We may also need to share your personal information where we are legally obliged to do so, and/or with the Police, local authorities, the courts and any other government department, such as the Home Office and the DBS (but only if us doing so is lawful) and/or with our professional advisors when they need it to give us their professional advice.

We will transfer the personal information we collect about outside the UK only in order to perform our contract with you and only where:

• There is an adequacy regulation by the UK government in respect of that country. This means that the country to which we transfer your data are deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information; or
• We have out in place special measures to ensure that your personal information is treated by third parties in a way which is consistent with UK data protection laws, for example we will put in a place a contract between us and the third party which includes specific contractual clauses obligating the third party to treat your personal information in accordance with UK data
  protection law or
• We have asked for your explicit consent to transfer your personal information.

If you require further information about these protective measures, please contact the Recruitment Manager or Head of HR.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties
who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you
and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

We will retain your personal information for a period of 6 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to role. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates
on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with obligations under data protection law.

If you are the successful applicant for a role, information which is relevant to your on-going employment relationship will be transferred to your employment record and retained in accordance with our staff privacy notice.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party. If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the central HR team hrteam@ejparker.co.uk in writing.

Right to withdraw consent

Where your personal data is processed on the basis of your consent or explicit consent you have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. To withdraw your consent, please email the central HR team hrteam@ejparker.co.uk. Once we have received notification that
you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our retention policy, we will dispose of your personal data securely.

Where to go if you want more information about your rights or to make a complaint

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates data protection and privacy matters in the UK. They make a lot of information accessible on their website and they ensure that the registered details of all data controllers such as ourselves are available publicly. You can access them here https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/

You can make a complaint to the ICO at any time about the way we use your information. However, we hope that you would consider raising any issue or complaint you have with us first. We will always do our very best to solve any problems you may have.

Contact us

You’re welcome to get in touch with us to discuss your information at any time. Please email hrteam@ejparker.co.uk