Privacy Notice for Job Applicants

When you apply for a job with the Foundation, we collect and process a range of information about you. This includes:

• 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;
• whether or not you have a disability for which the Foundation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process; and
• information about your entitlement to work in the UK.

The Foundation may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be provided by recruitment agencies, contained in applications, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online tests.

The Foundation may also collect personal data about you from third parties, e.g. references supplied by former employers, information from employment background providers. The Foundation 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 HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

Why does the Foundation process personal data?

The Foundation needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It may also need to process your data to enter into a contract with you. In some cases, the Foundation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

The Foundation 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 the Foundation to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. The Foundation may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

The Foundation may process special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation or religion or belief, to monitor recruitment statistics. It may also collect information about whether or not applicants are disabled to make reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability. The Foundation processes such information to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

The Foundation will not use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.

If your application is unsuccessful, the Foundation may keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. The Foundation will ask for your consent before it keeps your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time.

Who has access to data?

Job applicant personal information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR and recruitment team, interviewers and managers involved in the recruitment process, and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

The Foundation will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. The Foundation will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you.

Your data will not be transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

How does the Foundation protect data?

The Foundation takes the security of your data seriously. It has 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. Recruitment data is kept in a secure location with access restricted to HR employees only.

For how long does the Foundation keep data?

The Foundation will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

If your job application for employment is unsuccessful, the Foundation will hold your data on file for 6 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. If you agree to allow the Foundation to keep your personal data on file, the Foundation will hold your data on file for a further 6 months for consideration for future employment opportunities. At the end of that period, or once you withdraw your consent, your data will be deleted or destroyed.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file 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 rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data 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 data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact Jayne Desmond at dataprotection@resolutionfoundation.org.

If you believe that the Foundation has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time Limit to Respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

What if you do not provide personal data?

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

Automated decision-making

Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.

Equal Opportunities Monitoring Forms

The Foundation is committed to promoting a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all under-represented communities and groups. In order to monitor the effectiveness of our Equal Opportunities Policy and to ensure that we meet our obligations, we ask applicants to complete an equal opportunities monitoring form on a voluntary basis. The information provided is not used at any stage of the shortlisting or selection process and is supplied to us in an anonymised format.