COWELL RECRUITMENT
JOB APPLICANTS
Cowell Recruitment is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
As part of the recruitment process, Cowell Recruitment collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. This Privacy Notice describes how we use that data and meet our obligations in accordance with data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018, as may be amended from time to time.
It applies to all job applicants who submit personal data in the form of CVs, cover letters, application forms and copies of training records/certification to Cowell Recruitment, speculatively or in response to a job advertisement.
Successful applicants will have access to our privacy notices for employees, workers, contractors, volunteers, and interns when we are collecting or processing additional personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
Personal data to which this Privacy Notice relates will be stored in our personnel management systems and other IT systems including email.
WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?
We collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
- Personal contact details such as name, title, address, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses
- Details of your qualifications, skills, experience, employment history and professional memberships
- Information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements
- Proof of identify, e.g., driving licence or passport
- Right to work documentation, references and other information included in a CV or cover letter or as part of the application process.
We may also collect, store and use the following ‘special categories’ of more sensitive personal
information:
- Information about any disability to enable us to make reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability.
We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, however, we will only seek
information from third parties once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we
are doing so.
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?
We collect personal information about potential employees, workers, contractors, volunteers and
interns through the application and recruitment process, either directly from candidates or
sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider.
We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties such as employers, or
background check agencies.
HOW WILL WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU?
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to.
Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to take steps at your request prior to entering a contract with you.
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation, e.g., mandatory check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, e.g., processing data from job applicants to allow 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 use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests)
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
CHANGE OF PURPOSE
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it.
DATA SHARING
We may have to share your data with third parties, including (but not limited to) third-party service providers and other entities.
We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. Why might we share your personal information with third parties? We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.
HOW SECURE IS YOUR INFORMATION WITH THIRD-PARTY SERVICE PROVIDERS AND OTHER ENTITIES IN OUR GROUP?
All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect
your personal information in line with our policies.
We only permit them to process your personal data for specified (recruitment) purposes and in
accordance with our instructions.
WHEN MIGHT WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES?
We may share your personal information with third parties for recruitment purposes where a
vacancy considered suitable may exist in other business areas. Information may be shared with
members of Human Resources, interviewers involved in the recruitment process and managers in the business area with the vacancy.
This means that these organisations to which we transfer your data are deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for your personal information.
However, to ensure that your personal information does receive an adequate level of protection we have put in place standard policy terms for data protection to ensure that your personal information is treated by those third parties in a way that is consistent with, and which respects UK laws on data protection.
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.
DATA RETENTION
How long will we use/hold your information for?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we
collected it for. If your application is speculative and we have no suitable vacancies, your personal data will be retained for a period of six months, after which it will be deleted or destroyed.
If your application is unsuccessful, the organisation will retain your data on file for six months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. When you are asked, and have agreed, to give us consent to hold your details for a further six months for consideration for future employment opportunities, at the end of that period, or once you withdraw your consent, your data is deleted or destroyed. If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your Human Resources file (electronic) and retained during your employment.
YOUR RIGHTS IN CONNECTION WITH PERSONAL INFORMATION
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access (commonly known as a ‘data subject access request’) – this enables you to request
to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you
- Request correction – this enables you to request to have any incomplete or inaccurate information
we hold about you corrected
- Request erasure – this enables you to request 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 it
- Object to processing – where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and
there is something which makes you want to object to processing on this ground
- Request the restriction of processing – this allows you to request 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.
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.
WHAT MAY WE NEED FROM YOU?
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.