Recruitment – privacy notice

Where you have applied for a job, work experience, fixed term contract, secondment or internship with us we will collect the following (this list is non-exclusive):

• Contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses
• Preferred method of contact
• Copies of driving licence, passport, birth certificates and proof of current address, such as bank statements and council tax bills
• Notice period and preferred start date
• Evidence of how you meet the requirements of the job, such as application forms, CVs, covering letters, references, assessment outputs, employment history, academic qualifications/history, professional training/certifications, skills, and work experience or internships
• Evidence of your current and/or future work eligibility status, immigration status, including visa type, and visa expiry date 
• Diversity and equal opportunities monitoring information – this can include information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, disability and other ‘special category data’ information about your health, including any medical needs or conditions
• Other information required for some applications
• If you contact us regarding your application, a record of that correspondence including, but not limited to, the content and attachments of emails
• Details of your use of our recruitment tools and services, such as your candidate profile, the source of your application, the date/time, the role(s) you applied for, salary history/expectations, alerts for vacancies, the status of your application and updates on how it moves forward
• Derived data about you, that is, data that includes our staff’s opinion of you such as, but not limited, to the stages you complete of the recruitment process and those you do not, records of interviews, interview notes/feedback, assessment feedback, rejection stage, rejection reason, and job offer details

We may also collect, store and use the “special categories” of more sensitive personal information including, but not limited to:

• Information about your physical or mental health, or disability status
• Information about your health and medical conditions for health and safety reporting purposes
• Criminal records information
• Personal information related to the Equality Act 2010 inclusive of data known as ‘Protected Characteristics’ (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership (in employment only), pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation)
• Personal information related to our internal equality and diversity monitoring policy (geographical location, organisation, socio-economic class, caring responsibilities, educational background)

We use your personal information in the recruitment process for employment, work experience, fixed term contract, secondment or internship at the Centre in the following ways:

• To reply to you about the position you have applied for or inquired about
• To approach you as a good fit for employment, work experience or internship
• To check you are the right candidate for the role
• To move your application forward including making changes in applicant tracking systems or dedicated recruitment-based software and websites
• To receive a reference from a sectoral relevant individual where they have gained permission from you to be introduced to us
• To send you notifications for other job, work experience or internship vacancies
• To inform you about the status of your application
• To invite you to participate in relevant surveys, questionnaires, research projects and events where your profile has been identified relevant to research work, we are conducting (we will never share or sell your personal data and we will never include you in research participation where we have not gained your permission to do so)
• With permission, retain your personal information for longer statutory requirements where you have not been successful but would like the opportunity to invite you to apply again in the future

Please be reassured that the Centre limit access to your recruitment personal data to those who have a genuine need to access it:

• the Operations team
• the recruiting manager for the role in question
• interviewers/assessment reviewers for the role in question
• the Head of the team in which  the role in question sits
• The Head of Finance (purpose of adding to payroll and pension) and Executive Director (final authority for appointment)

We maintain a reserve list of candidates who met our requirements but were not successful in securing the specific post they applied for. We’ll ask for your permission to be added to this list. We will refer to the list when other roles are advertised and will contact you if you match the role. We will ask for your permission before putting you forward for the role.

If you are successfully recruited, we will upload your details to our HR system. We will also share your data for statistical analysis (it will be anonymised first) if we are required to do so by law – for example, by court order, or to prevent fraud or other crime.

For the purposes of reporting on and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of our recruitment systems and processes, we may retain a handful of personal data points about you (the source of your application, the stage you reached in the process, and the overall reason you were rejected), however, none of these data points are personally traceable to you.

We gather your information in one or more of the following ways:

• Via publicly available sources such as social media, where we have identified you as an individual we would like to approach as a good fit for employment, work experience or internship at the Centre
• From a reference of a sectoral relevant individual where they have gained permission from you to be introduced to us
• From a Higher Education Provider (HEP) such as a college or University who has recommended you to us
• From a current or former employee where they hold a previously established relationship with you and sharing your personal information with the Centre would not be unexpected
• From yourself via a recruitment web advert we have developed which may also mean we have received your personal data via a recruitment platform or website
• From a recruiter, recruitment agency or other applicant tracking system or recruitment website
• From yourself when you have participated in a survey or questionnaire as a research participant and we have identified you as a potential candidate for employment, work experience or internship at the Centre
• From yourself where you have responded to an advert on our website, completed our contact us page on our website or sent an unsolicited prospective email to us
• We also use platforms such as LinkedIn, Indeed, CV Library and others where we may have identified you as a potential candidate for employment, work experience or internship at the Centre
• From publicly available websites and social media platforms
• From former employers and people named by candidates as references
• Where relevant, the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
• If relevant to the role, Government departments or other relevant and related institutions.

As you interact with our website, we automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies via Google Analytics to enhance your experience of our website.

Our website uses cookies for collecting user information which may include IP address, operating system, and browser information. We use persistent cookies to track returning visitors. They expire after 12 months and enable us to compare website traffic from month to month.

Cookies are text files, which identify a user’s computer to our servers. Cookies in themselves do not identify the individual user, just the computer used. You can learn more about cookies by visiting http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

You can manage and delete cookies through your web browser. Each browser manages cookies differently, but you can learn more about cookie settings in the most common browsers using the links below:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari for Mac
• Safari for iOS
• Edge
• Internet Explorer

You can also prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics by using the Google Opt-out Browser Add-on, available at this link.

We will securely store your information for the duration of the recruitment process. Where you have not been successful, we shall retain your personal data for up to 6 months in accordance with the UK Limitation Act 1980. We will only retain your personal data longer than 6 months where we have gained your permission to do so. If you have been successful in the recruitment process, we will provide you with an Employee Privacy Notice outlining the retention period of your personal information.

We process personal data throughout the recruitment application process based on different legal bases:

• Contract: Processing your data is necessary to move your application forward before signing a contract of work. This concerns employment or pre-employment checks.
• Legal: Complying with applicable law with regard to personal data necessary to satisfy our legal and regulatory obligations, including with regard to public health and workplace safety, entitlement to work and when applicable security checks.
• Legitimate Interest: Evaluating your application and to manage our relationship with you, to ensure that we recruit appropriate employees, and to evaluate and maintain the efficacy of our recruiting process more generally. We will also process your personal data to invite you to participate in projects which may be, or similar to, surveys, questionnaires, events, interviews or other research projects where the work we are conducting is for societal benefit.
• Consent: If we offer you the opportunity to participate in our optional recruiting programs or if we collect sensitive personal data for legally permitted purposes other than compliance with our legal obligations regarding public health and workplace safety. We will ask for consent from you where you are not successful, and we want to retain your personal information for longer than 6 months. Also, for us to send you surveys, questionnaires, information about events, interviews or other research project opportunities where the work we are conducting is for societal benefit.

We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:

• The right to access – You have the right to request copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.
• The right to rectification – You have the right to request that we correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request we complete any information you believe is incomplete.
• The right to erasure – You have the right to request that we erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
• The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
• The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to our processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
• The right to data portability – You have the right to request that we transfer the data that we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. 

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer: dpo@theevidencequarter.com

If you have any questions about our privacy notice, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to email to our Data Protection Officer: dpo@theevidencequarter.com

We kindly request you allow us the opportunity to address your complaints when they arise.

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us by contacting dpo@theevidencequarter.com 

You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) using the details below if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

The ICO’s address:   

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Changes to this privacy notice

The What Works Centre for Wellbeing reserves the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.