Recruitment & Candidate Privacy Policy

 

What is the purpose of this document? 

ITAA.ai LIMITED 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.  

 

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. 

 

Who is your personal information collected from? 

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources: 

  • You, the candidate. 
  • Your recruitment agency. 
  • Our background check providers (primarily TrustID and DDC). 
  • Credit reference agencies 
  • Disclosure and Barring Service. 
  • Your named referees (to verify qualifications and the experience outlined in your CV). 
  • Information which is in the public domain (for verification purposes). 
  • Government checks (for verification purposes). 

 

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. 
  • The information you have provided on our application form, including name, address, telephone number, personal email address, education history, qualifications and employment history. 
  • Any information you provide to us during the interview process. 
  • Information obtained from sources other than yourself previously referred to in this notice. 
  • The result of immigration checks to establish if you have the right to work in the UK.  

This may involve us collecting, storing and using the following types of more sensitive personal information: 

  • Information about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sexual orientation and political opinions.
  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records. 

 

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 or engagement you are being considered 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. 

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

We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment (or contract of engagement if you are a contractor) with you.  

Having received your CV and covering letter, your application form, or information from your recruitment agency, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role or engagement. 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 or engagement.  If we decide to offer you the role or engagement, we will then take up references and carry out any other checks we consider necessary before confirming your appointment or engagement. 

 

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 or engagement 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  

Where appropriate we will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways: 

  • We use information about 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, interview, or site visit.  
  • We use information about racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, disability or sexual orientation to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.  

 

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 with third parties? 

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: your recruitment consultant, other companies in our group of companies, search providers, and professional advisers. We may also share your information with online recruitment platforms such as Indeed, Total Jobs, and LinkedIn, particularly when you have applied for a position with us via one of these platforms.  

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. 

 

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. These measures include encryption, anonymisation, pseudonymisation, and restricted access. 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 our data privacy manager. 

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 six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role or engagement. 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 applicable laws and regulations. 

If we would like to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that we might be able to consider you for an opportunity that may arise in future, you should write to us separately, giving your explicit consent to us to retain your personal information for a fixed period for that purpose. We may also choose to write to you asking for your consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period for recruitment purposes if we feel that future opportunities within our organisation might present themselves. 

 

Rights of access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and data portability  

Your rights in connection with personal information 

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

  • Request accessto your personal information (commonly known as making 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. For example, “I would like to know what personal data you have collected about me during the recruitment process.” 
  • Request rectificationof the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected. For example, “Please update my contact information to reflect my new phone number.” 
  • Request erasureof 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). For example, “I request that you delete all my personal data from your records as I am no longer interested in the position”. 
  • Object to processingof 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. For example, “I object to the processing of my personal data for marketing purposes”. 
  • Request the restriction of processingof 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. For example, “Please restrict the processing of my data while I verify its accuracy.” 
  • Request the transferof your personal information to another party. For example, “I would like my personal data to be transferred to another organisation.” 

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 our data privacy manager. 

 

Questions or complaints 

If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact our data privacy manager who has been appointed to oversee compliance with this privacy notice and whose contact details are available from our HR team or your contact at our organisation.   

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who is responsible for data protection issues in the UK and whose contact details are as follows: 

Information Commissioner’s Office 
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF 

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113