Recruitment privacy notice

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Recruitment privacy notice

This recruitment privacy notice explains how we collect, use and store personal information about you in the context of applying for employment with us and our recruitment process. It explains the circumstances where we may also have to share personal information. The recruitment privacy notice will also tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Personal information, or personal data, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. Anything we do with your personal information (from the point at which we collect it until we delete it from our systems) is called processing.

It's important that you read this recruitment privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or fair processing notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you. This is so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your personal information. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

This recruitment privacy notice is provided in a layered format, so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.

We may collect, use, store and share different kinds of personal information about you. We collect this information at various points during the application, selection and on-boarding processes depending on how your application progresses. To help you identify these, they have been grouped together as follows:

Group Data	Personal information includes
Identity Data	Name, signature, date of birth, gender, marital status, passport details, birth certificate, drivers licence, CV, nationality
Contact Data	Email address, phone number, address
Job Data	Employment history, references, training, skills and qualifications
Absence Data	Absence and leave information (dates, type of leave taken). Absence Data may also contain special category data.
Recruitment Data	Applicant responses to interview questions and interview assessments
Health Data	Special Category Data about medical or health conditions including reasonable adjustments and occupational health advice
Equality Data	Personal information relating to an individual’s ethnic origin, disability, religion or belief, gender reassignment or sexual orientation (which may comprise of Special Category Data)
Special Category Data	Race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data; information about criminal convictions and offences

There is also other information that we collect, use, store and share that is not personal information, including:

Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal information but is not considered personal information in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Equality Data to calculate the percentage of employees who fall within a certain category for ensuring we meet our equality requirements. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal information so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal information, which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

Anonymised Data is the process of turning personal information into a form which does not identify individuals and where identification is not likely to take place.

We collect and use personal information about you in accordance with our working relationship with you and, where applicable, to provide you with benefits. In general terms, we collect, use, store and share personal information about you to:

Make decisions about hiring you
Maintain our records relating to the recruitment process
Assess and validate your qualifications and experience
Ensure that we comply with the law e.g. validating your right to work
Arrange necessary travel/work visas or immigration application
Be able to perform the contract we will enter with you
Perform any obligations and exercise any rights imposed or conferred on us, that we are legally obliged to (e.g equal opportunities monitoring and reporting)
Understand your needs (e.g. health) and how they may be met during the recruitment process
Prevent fraud
Where we need to protect your interests

Further details can be found in the specific sections for how we process your personal information which follow and can be accessed through these links:

Applying to work with us
Safety and wellbeing
Information about criminal convictions

Lawful grounds

Under data protection law, we must have legal grounds in order to process your personal information. These are known as lawful grounds. There are six lawful grounds, but we will generally only use four of these, as set out below:

Lawful ground	What it means
Consent	You have given your consent to the processing of personal information for the specified purpose
Contractual	Where you are in a contractual relationship, and we need to process personal information to allow us to perform the contract, or where you intend to enter into a contractual relationship with us
Legal obligation	Where we need to process personal information to comply with a legal obligation placed on us
Vital interests	This is where your personal data is processed in order to protect you. For example, where you have let us know that you have a medical condition and we have to share that information with others in the event of an emergency affecting your health

Applying to work for us

Personal information processed	Identity data Contact data Job data Absence data Recruitment data Health data Equality data Special category data
Source of personal information	Direct Interactions Third party sources
The purpose for processing	Applicants: Making decisions about employing you Determining the terms upon which you will work for us Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK To maintain our recruitment records To assess and validate your qualifications and experience Overseas deployment Complying with health and safety obligations To prevent fraud To accommodate any adjustments and evacuation requirements during the interview process To be able to address any comments, complaints or concerns regarding the recruitment process or final appointment decision To conduct data analytics required to provide management information e.g. equal opportunities reporting and monitoring To enable your personal information to be available to you should you wish to apply for other roles with us, within the period set out below Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.
Lawful ground(s)	Contractual Legal obligation We do not need your consent if we use Special Category Data in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data (such as set out in the Safety and Well-being section of this privacy notice). If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.
How long we will keep your personal information	If you don’t start work with us following the recruitment process, we will retain your personal information for 1 year.

Safety and wellbeing

We have a duty to ensure the safety and well being of all who work with us, in general terms and in compliance with law. To meet that duty, we will process the following personal information for the following purposes:

Personal information processed	Identity data Contact data Job data Absence data Health data Special category data
Source of personal information	Direct Interactions
The purpose for processing	To gain occupational health advice on a health condition in order to accommodate any adjustments you may require during the interview process To administer first aid To report any incidents and or accidents To put in place evacuation arrangements prior to attendance at interview
Lawful ground(s)	Legal obligation Vital interests *We do not need your consent if we use Special Category Data in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data (such as in the areas of occupational health). If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.
How long we will keep your personal information	If you don’t start work with us following the recruitment process, we will retain your personal information for 1 year.

Information about criminal conviction

We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so.

Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences in the following ways

Facilitate the processing of security access cards to worksites where a Disclosure Scotland check is required
Recruitment or determining an individual’s continuing suitability in a position identified as having a fiduciary duty

Consequences of not providing personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to offer you a role within SE, perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as paying you), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our visitors).

Access to your information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.

Correcting your information

You may ask us to correct any personal information that you believe is incorrect, incomplete or not up to date.

Deletion of your information

You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:

You consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained
We are using that information with your consent and you have withdrawn your consent – see Withdrawing consent to using your information below
You have validly objected to our use of your personal information – see Objecting to how we may use your information below
Our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations

Objecting to how we may use your information

Where we use your personal information to perform tasks carried out in the public interest then, if you ask us to, we will stop using that personal information unless there are overriding legitimate grounds to continue.

Restricting how we may use your information

In some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This might apply where we are checking the accuracy of personal information that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information.

The right might also apply where there is no longer a basis for using your personal information, but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right to validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Automated processing

If we use your personal information on an automated basis to make decisions which significantly affect you, you have the right to ask that the decision be reviewed by an individual to whom you may make representations and contest the decision.

Withdrawing consent to using your information

Where we use your personal information with your consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop using your personal information for the purpose(s) for which consent was given.

Direct interactions	Directly from you. For example, when you apply for a job we will collect personal information during recruitment activities
Third party sources	We may receive personal information about you from various third party sources. These include Disclosure Scotland, referees and former employers.
Suppliers	Any supplier we have procured to deliver a service on our behalf. Such suppliers will be under contractual obligations to process your personal information in compliance with Data Protection Laws. For example, a recruitment agency.

Category of organisation	Purpose for sharing personal information
Public sector partners	This will include Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Foreign and Commonwealth office, for the purpose of our collaborative public sector remit. Find out more about who our public sector partners
Government Bodies	To meet: Our legal requirements Our obligations as a public sector body or Requirements under government programmes Such government bodies include Audit Scotland, Home Office, Police
Colleges, Universities or other Educational Institutions	Validating your educational qualifications
Other Data Controller	For a specific purpose (e.g. referee)
Suppliers	Any supplier we have procured to deliver a service on our behalf. Such suppliers will be under contractual obligations to process your personal information in compliance with Data Protection Laws.

Work with us

Recruitment privacy notice