Privacy policy for job applicants

As part of any recruitment process, we collect and processes personal data relating to job applicants. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.

If you have any queries about the process or how we handle your information please contact info@sharecommunity.org.uk.  

The information we ask for is used to assess your suitability for employment and includes:

• your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
• details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
• whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK;
• equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and disability;
• information about any unspent convictions either on the application form or in a separate, confidential letter, to Share’s HR Manager.

We collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews such as on interview notes or other tasks you’re required to complete.

We will ask you to bring original proof of your identity, and original copies of your qualifications to your interview. We need to confirm the identity of our staff and their right to work in the UK, and we need to check that you have the qualifications you said you do. Photocopies of these will be taken and stored securely by the HR department.

We will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers and information from criminal records checks. We will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that it is doing so.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in our HR database and on other IT systems such as email.

We need to process your data to enter into a contract with you. We also need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations such as checking a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

We have a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate's suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

We ask you to tell us if you have a disability and therefore require reasonable adjustments to be made to the recruitment process. Where we process other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation and gender, this is for equal opportunities monitoring purposes.

We are obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences because all roles at Share involve working with vulnerable adults, and sometimes children.

Your information will be held internally for the purposes of the recruitment process. It will be accessed by HR, shortlisting panels and the interviewers involved in the recruitment process. Equal opportunities information will only be seen by HR.

We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. We will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you and the Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain necessary criminal records checks.

We will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.

We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

Our HR database is fully encrypted, and the password is changed every 3 months. All folders containing documents related to recruitment, sit within the HR folder on our network, which only members of the HR team and the CEO have access to. Any emails you send us are stored securely on our network which is patched and virus protected and regularly updated and regulated by our IT Services company, Wanstor.

Any physical information that we hold on you is kept in a locked filing cabinet within our HR department, which only HR and the CEO can access. When physical information is destroyed it is done so via a confidential shredding service called Restore Datashred.

Where we engage third parties to process personal data on our behalf, we do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, we will shred all copies of ID and certificates you provided without delay, once a decision has been made that you have been unsuccessful in your application. Your application form, equal opportunities information, interview notes, assessments and any other relevant documents will be retained for 6 months from the date of your unsuccessful interview, following that they will be shredded.

If your application for employment is successful, the information you provided during the application process will be retained by us as part of your employee file for the duration of your employment plus 6 years following the end of your employment.

If we receive an unsolicited CV at a time when we are not recruiting, we will delete the CV and inform the you of this. If we do decide to hold an unsolicited CVs on file for future recruitment rounds, we will be provide this privacy notice to you.

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• access and obtain a copy of your data on request
• require us to change incorrect or incomplete data;
• require us to delete or stop processing your data;
• object to the processing of your data where we are relying on our legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
• ask us to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override our legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact info@sharecommunity.org.uk. If you believe that we have not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to us during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, we may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.