Recruitment Privacy Notice
As part of any recruitment process, Colchester Institute collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The organisation is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.
What information do we collect?
Colchester Institute collects a range of information about you.
This includes (but is not limited to):
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
- details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
- information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
- information regarding your criminal record, including enhanced criminal record certificate and whether you are barred from working in regulated activity:
- whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process; and
- information about your right to work in the UK.
We collect personal data from you when you apply for a job with us. Personal data is data that relates to an identifiable living person (‘data subject’). Colchester Institute may 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 or other forms of assessment.
We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers. We will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that we are doing so.
Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).
How will we use the information about you?
We will hold your information safely and securely in line with the Data Protection Law including the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), a new regulation which replaces the Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC). The regulations came into effect on 25th May 2018.
We collect information about you to process your application, communicate with you during the recruitment process, invite you to interview and if successful, share with the relevant teams within our organisation to make all the arrangements prior to your start date.
Why does Colchester Institute process personal data?
We need to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. We may also need to process your data to enter into a contract with you.
In some cases, we need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations, for example, it is mandatory to check a successful applicant’s identity and eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts and also to undertake an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Check (which includes barred list information, for those engaged in regulated activity).
Colchester Institute has 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.
Colchester Institute may process personal sensitive data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation or religion or belief, to monitor recruitment statistics. We may also collect information about whether or not applicants are disabled to make reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability. We process such information to carry out our obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.
If your application is unsuccessful, Colchester Institute may keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. We will ask for your consent before we keep your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time.
Who has access to data?
Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the Human Resources team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.
We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. However, data will be shared with third parties prior to an offer of employment for candidates who, as part of the interview process, are requested to undertake psychometric testing.
Following an offer of employment, we will share your data with former employers to obtain references for you.
How does Colchester Institute protect data?
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.
For how long does Colchester Institute keep data?
If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the organisation will delete/destroy all right to work, DBS Check documents and education/training certificates. We will hold all other recruitment data on file for 6 (six) months after the end of the relevant recruitment process, unless there is a specific business reason for the data to be retained for longer, such as responding to a complaint / court proceedings. At the end of that period, or unless you withdraw your consent for the data to be held, 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 paper based) and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
- require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
- require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
- object to the processing of your data where Colchester Institute is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing;
- restrict the organisations processing of your personal data;
- request a copy of the personal information you have provided to the organisation and this can be transferred to someone else (if processing within the organisation is based on your consent or necessary to carry out the organisation’s contract with you, and is carried out by automated means); and
- complain to the Information Commissioner if you believe that the organisation has not complied with your GDPR rights – ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact jobline@colchester.ac.uk
What if you do not provide personal data?
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to Colchester Institute 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.
