HR Candidate Privacy Notice

 PRIVACY NOTICE FOR APPLICANTS

1. What is the purpose of this document?

The University is a "data controller". 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 General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR).

2. Data protection principles

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

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
6. Kept securely.
7. 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, supporting statement and covering letter.
• The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, national insurance number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, professional memberships, your right to work in the UK rights.
• Any information you provide to us during an interview, e.g. mobile phone number.

We also collect, store and use the following "special categories" of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Information about any medical condition.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.
• Any conflict of interest

4. How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

• You, the candidate.
• Any recruitment agency that we have procured for assisting in the recruitment of a specific role.
• Disclosure Scotland for PVG scheme, criminal convictions, background check providers, from which we collect the following categories of data:
  • Name
  • Address ( Current & History)
  • Date of Birth
  • County of Birth
  • Nationality
  • Telephone Number
  • Email Address
  • National Insurance Number
  • Passport Number
  • Driving Licence Number
  • National Identify Card Number
• Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data:
  • Confirmation of work history
  • Start date of employment
  • Leaving Date of employment
  • Relationship
  • Mani Duties of role
  • Work standards
  • Sickness absence days (not reasons) during last 12 months of employment
  • Reason for Leaving
  • Suitability of the applied for role

5. 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 role you have applied for.
• 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, such as right to work checks.

We need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you. We need to process the information provided by you about your named referees in order to carry out reference checks and decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.  We believe we have a legitimate interest in processing this information for this purpose.

Having received your CV, supporting statement, any cover letter and application form, 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.  We may carry out a criminal record check and Disclosure for PVG 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 references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further.

6. 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 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.
• We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, sexual orientation or gender identity, and disability to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting. The reporting we do is for our obligation to Race Equality Charter Mark, ATHENA SWAN, FOI, Public Sector Equality Duty etc, however, all reporting on this data is anonymised.

7. Information about criminal convictions

We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions for all roles, however, we are entitled to carry out a criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal conviction history which makes you unsuitable for the role. In particular:

• The roles of :
  • Counsellor
  • Disability Advisors
  • Mental Health Nursing Lecturers
  • Lift Off Development Workers

which are listed on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (SI 1975/1023) so are eligible for a Protection of Vulnerable Groups Scheme membership check from the Disclosure Scotland.

• The roles of:
• Security Assistants & Supervisors
• Caretakers
• Lecturers in Ethical Hacking
• Occupational Health Advisor/Nurse
• Catering Manager (Holder of Alcohol Licence)

which require a high degree of trust and integrity, and so we would like to ask you to seek an enhanced disclosure of your criminal records history.

We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

8. Automated decision-making

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

9. Data sharing

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: External interview panel members. All our third-party service providers 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.

10. 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. Details of these measures may be obtained from Moriamo Oduyemi, Head of Corporate Information Services by emailing m.oduyemi@abertay.ac.uk.

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.

11. Data retention

We will retain your personal information for a period of six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the 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 our data retention policy.

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 explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

12. Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

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 Ruth Grierson, HR Systems Officer by emailing r.grierson@abertay.ac.uk.

13. Data protection officer

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights above or if you have any questions, please contact the University’s Data Protection Officer (“DPO”):

Data Protection Officer
Academic Registry
Abertay University
Kydd Building
Bell Street
Dundee DD1 1HG
Tel: 01382 308000 email: dataprotectionofficer@abertay.ac.uk

You will not have to pay a fee to exercise any of your rights. However, the University may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances. You are also entitled to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (the “ICO”) (www.ico.org.uk) about any concerns about the way the University has handled your personal data. The University would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.