Dear Candidate,
Thank you for your interest in Fenwick.
What is the purpose of this document?
Fenwick is a "controller" in relation to personal data. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You have access to this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
1. Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:
• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
• Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
• accurate and kept up to data.
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
• Kept securely.
2. The kind of information we hold about you
2.1. In connection with your interest in working with us (including any application you may make), we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:
Information on recruitment preferences for the purposes of providing you with tailored job alerts, where you have requested these.
Information set out in your CV/covering letter, application form and assessments including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history (including job titles, work history, working hours, appraisals, training records and professional memberships) and qualifications.
Information you provide to us during an interview.
Information you provide to us and may be gathered relating to references.
Information provided to us following a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
Identification information (including a copy of driving licence, passport and utility bills).
Copies of rights to work documentation.
Any other information you may provide in support of building your candidate account.
2.2. We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:
Your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, if you choose to provide this.
Your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
Information about your criminal convictions and offences (for example, from DBS checks).
3. How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
You, the candidate
Recruitment agencies, any background check provider and credit reference agencies from which we collect the following categories of data: name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, criminal convictions/offences and qualifications; information you provide to us during an interview.
The Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions.
Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: position held, dates of employment, reason for leaving, any reason why you would be unsuitable to employ.
From time-to-time data from third parties from a publicly accessible source such as LinkedIn.
4. How we will use your information
We will use the personal information we collect about you to:
Assess your suitability for roles.
Carry out background/reference checks, where applicable
Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
Maintain our records relating to our hiring processes.
Comply with our legal or regulatory requirements.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.
We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.
Having received your CV and covering letter or your application form and the results from any test which you have undertaken, where applicable, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we may then, where necessary, take up references, carry out a criminal record check and carry out any other check before confirming your appointment.
5. How we use particularly sensitive personal information
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
We will use information you supply about your disability status (together with any adjustment requests) to ensure that we provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process and beyond (e.g., any accessibility requirements for attending interviews).
We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
6. Criminal convictions
We envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.
We may collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We are entitled to carry out a criminal record check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role. In particular:
We may seek a disclosure of any unspent criminal convictions that you may have in order to:
Assess suitability for roles.
If we are required by law to do so.
If the role requires a high degree of trust and integrity (for example it involves dealing with high value transactions), then we may require further or more detailed disclosures, including a DBS check.
We have in place appropriate safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
7. Automated decision-making
You may, subject to the role being applied for, be subject to decisions that may have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making, for example, if a role requires a UK driving licence and you respond “no” to the question asking if you have a valid UK driving licence then your application will be automatically eliminated, similarly if you respond “no” to having the right to work in the UK then your application will be automatically eliminated.
8. Data sharing
8.1. Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
We will only share your personal information with third parties for the purposes of processing your application: for example, we will share your personal information with our HR and payroll software provider at the point of application. If you are applying for a role within a third party brand department, we may also share your personal information with that brand for the purpose of processing your application. All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
8.2. 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. Details of these measures may be obtained from peoplefenwick.co.uk.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
9. Data Retention
9.1. How long will you use my information for?
We will retain your personal information for a period of up to 12 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.
If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.
9.2. Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask 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 (see below).
Object to processing of your personal information 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. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask 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.
Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact Talent@fenwick.co.uk in writing.
9.3. Compliance with Notice
Our Head of Legal oversees compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Head of Legal by emailing legal@fenwick.co.uk. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) who is responsible for data protection issues in the UK.
10. If you fail to provide personal information
If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if we require a credit check or references for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details, we will not be able to take your application further until you provide the information.