Candidate Privacy Policy
Scales & Associates is a “data controller”. This means we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being given this notice because you are applying for work with us, or asking us to help you find work with our clients.
Data protection principles
We will comply with data protection law, which says that the personal information we hold about you must 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 date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
The information we hold about you
In connection with your application for work, we will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information:
- The information you have provided in your CV and covering letter.
- Information you provide on any application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, employment history, qualifications and references.
- Salary and benefits information.
- Right-to-work documentation.
- Any information you provide to us during an interview.
We may also collect, store and use more sensitive types of personal information, such as information about your health (including any medical condition) and information about criminal convictions and offences.
How your personal information is collected
- From you, the candidate.
- From LinkedIn and other professional networks.
- From publications and internet searches.
- From your named referees, from whom we collect information about your employment history, suitability and character.
How we will use information about you
- To assess your skills, qualifications and suitability for roles.
- To carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
- To communicate with you about the recruitment process.
- To comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
- To introduce you to clients for suitable roles, with your agreement.
How we use sensitive personal information
- Information about disability status, to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process.
- Information about protected characteristics, to ensure meaningful equal-opportunity monitoring and reporting.
- Information about your right to work, to verify legal eligibility.
We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.
Data sharing
We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: our clients and prospective clients who are seeking candidates, and professional advisers such as accountants and legal advisers. All third parties are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information and to process it only for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
Information you submit through the forms on our website is transmitted securely and delivered to us by email using trusted service providers (Cloudflare and Resend), who process it only on our instructions.
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. Where data is transferred within or outside the EU, we put appropriate safeguards in place. We have procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator where we are legally required to do so.
Data retention
We retain your personal information so that we can contact you about further opportunities, to show that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way, and to support potential future placements. We audit the data we hold regularly and will confirm in writing what we retain.
Your rights
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- Request access to your personal information.
- Request correction of the personal information we hold about you.
- Request erasure of your personal information.
- Object to processing of your personal information.
- Request the restriction of processing of your personal information.
- Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.
Right to withdraw consent
You may withdraw your consent to processing for recruitment and work-finding purposes at any time. Once we receive notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purposes you originally agreed to and will dispose of your personal data securely in line with our retention policy.
Contact
To exercise any of these rights, or with any question about this notice, please contact andrew@scalesassociates.com with the subject line “Data protection request”.