Privacy notice for job applicants

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 date.

• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

• Kept securely.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (“DPO”) to oversee our compliance with data protection law and this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, how we handle your personal information or if you wish to make a complaint, please contact our DPO.

You can get in touch with us in the following ways:

• Write to us: Royal Voluntary Service, Hanley Centre, 29 Charles Street, Stoke-on-Trent ST1 3JP.
• Email us: dataprotection@royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk
• Call us: 029 2073 9184

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.

• The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications, national insurance number, optional disclosure of all protected characteristics in employment law for anonymous measurement of diversity data separate from application data.

• Any information you provide to us during an interview.

We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions, if you chose to provide it.

• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.

• Information about any reasonable adjustments you require as part of the recruitment process.

• The outcome of any DBS check and Information about criminal convictions and offences.

• To prove your Right to Work in the UK we are required by law to obtain and certify copies of certain documentation such as, but not limited to;
  • A share code for the Home Office Online Service which we may view and produce certified copies of - 
    
    • A British Passport
    • A Full UK Birth Certificate and a letter from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) showing your name and National Insurance number.
• A full list of current accepted means of establishing your right to work may be viewed at gov.uk/prove-right-to-work.
• Copies of your documentation will be collected and held digitally as part of the application process.
• We may perform a Right to Work in the UK check either face to face or digitally using a certified Identity Service Provider (IDSP).
• In all cases at interview, we will as a minimum ask to see evidence of Right to Work in the UK documents. We may also conduct the Right to Work in the UK check at the same time, depending on interview type and Identification type provided;
  • Face-to-Face Interviews - we will ask to see evidence of your Right to Work in the UK and perform a check by taking certified copies.
  • Video Interviews - we will see evidence of your Right to Work in the UK but may not be able to perform the check itself. Under these circumstances we may subsequently arrange to carry out an in person Right to Work in the UK check or a digital check with a certified IDSP.
• In making an application to work for Royal Voluntary Service you understand that a Right to Work in the UK check must be completed based on production of acceptable identification documents, before issue of your contract, and you are able to commence employment with Royal Voluntary Service.

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

• You, the candidate.

• Michael Page, Hays, Adecco, Reed and any potential local agency which would be authorised by HR and used by exception recruitment agencies, from which we collect the categories of data as specified above for recruitment and selection purposes.

• Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) UK Government and Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVC) Scottish Government background check provider, from which we collect the following categories of data: any criminal records in order to ensure suitability and protection for safer working with children and vulnerable adults but only as applicable to the role and subject to a HR risk assessment if necessary.

• If the role requires a credit reference a specific necessary agency would be selected and candidate notified from which we collect the following categories of data: any credit issues that may affect the role.

• Your named referees.

• From publicly accessible sources e.g. Google searches.

• The charity reserves the legal right to carry out a social media due diligence check ensuring due compliance with privacy and anti-discrimination law and if deemed necessary, will be open and transparent about any check needed in exceptional circumstances with consultation from HR. Information provided via social media advertising e.g. LinkedIn professional network or Facebook will also comply with privacy and anti-discrimination law.

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.

• Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.

• Carry out Right to Work in the UK checks.

• Communicate with you about the recruitment process.

• Keep records related to our hiring processes.

• Comply with 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 organisation.

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 and/or your application form, 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 meets the essential criteria or if it excels accordingly in a fair shortlisting process 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 will then take up references and/or carry out a criminal records check if applicable to the essential criteria of the responsibility or accountability of the role e.g. safer recruitment to protect children, or vulnerable adults, credit reference check before confirming your appointment.

Depending on the nature of the role, location, and the number of applicants, we may conduct the interview process in single or multiple stages, which may include video interviewing.

In making an application to work for Royal Voluntary Service you consent to video recording of you being made, if you are either invited to:

• A video screening where you are provided with several questions which you may answer at a time convenient for you, without the need for interviewers to be present and which is recorded and submitted by you to our secure recruitment platform.

Or

• A video interview, where you are asked questions by the interviewer(s), which we will record your responses to our secure recruitment platform.

The purpose of recording is to allow more than one hiring manager in the recruitment process to review your responses with the aim of eliminating bias from the recruitment process.

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.

We will use your special category data which may be particularly sensitive or confidential in the following ways:

• We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview.

• 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.

• We will use the information to generally understand our workforce and volunteers to ensure we can provide the right interviewing and selection techniques to engage and be as inclusive over and above including all those with protected characteristics.

We envisage that we will for certain roles process information about criminal convictions.

We will 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 criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role.

We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: recruitment agencies and government safer recruitment compliance with DBS/PVG as appropriate to role, and in certain cases approved third parties that provide digital checks on Right to Work documentation.

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group 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.

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.

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.

Unless you are appointed to the role, we will retain your personal information for a period of 6 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to role.

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.

If you are successful in being appointed to the role, your personal information will be transferred to your personnel file and retained in accordance with the retention periods for employee data.

Under data protection law, you have a number of different rights relating to the use of your personal information. Below below contains a summary of those rights and our obligations as follows:

More information about your rights and our obligations can be found on the ICO website.

Your rights - A right of access

What this involves:

• This is a right to obtain access to your personal data and various supplementary information.

What our obligations are:

• We must provide you with a copy or your personal information and the other supplementary information without undue delay and in any event within 1 month of receipt of your request;

• We cannot charge you for doing so save in specific circumstances (such as where you request further copies of your personal information).

Your rights - A right to have personal data rectified

What this involves:

• This is a right to have your personal information rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete.

What our obligations are:

• We must rectify any inaccurate or incomplete information without undue delay and in any event within 1 month of receipt of your request;

• If we have disclosed your personal information to others, we must (subject to certain exceptions) contact the recipients to inform them, that your personal information requires rectification.

Your rights - A right to erasure

What this involves:

• This is a right to have your personal information deleted or removed.

• This right only applies in certain circumstances (such as where we no longer need the personal information for the purposes for which it was collected).

• We have the right to refuse to delete or remove your personal data in certain circumstances.

What our obligations are:

• If this right applies, we must delete or remove your personal information without undue delay and in any event within one month of receipt of your request;

• If we have disclosed your personal information to others, we must (subject to certain exceptions) contact then recipients to inform them that your personal information must be erased.

Your rights - A right to data portability

What this involves:

• This is a right to obtain and re-use your personal information for your own purposes.

• It includes a right to ask that your personal information is transferred to another organisation (where technically feasible).

• This right only applies in certain limited circumstances.

What our obligations are:

• If this right applies we must provide your personal information to you in a structured, commonly used and machine reasonable form.

• Again, we must act without undue delay and in any event within 1 month of receipt of your request;

• We cannot charge you for this service.

Your rights - A right to object

What this involves:

• This is a right to object to the use of your personal information.

• The right applies in certain specific circumstances only.

• You can use this right to challenge our use of your personal information based on our legitimate interests.

• You can also use this right to object to use of your personal information for direct marketing.

What our obligations are:

• If you object to us using your personal information for direct marketing, we must stop using your personal information in this way as soon as we receive your request.

• If you object to other uses of your personal information, whether we have to stop using your personal information will depend on the particular circumstances.

Your rights - A right to object to automated decision making

What this involves:

• This is a right not to be subject to a decision which is made solely on the basis of automated processing of your personal information where the decision in question will have a legal impact on you or a similarly significant effect.

What our obligations are:

• Where such a decision is made, you must be informed of that fact as soon as reasonably practicable;

• You then have 21 days from receipt of the notification to request that the decision is reconsidered or that a decision is made that is not based solely on automated processing;

• Your request must be complied with within 21 days.

Your rights - A right to restrict processing

What this involves:

• This is a right to ‘block’ or suppress processing of your personal information.

• This right applies in various circumstances, including where you contest the accuracy of your information).

What our obligations are:

• If we are required to restrict our processing of your personal information we will be able to store it but not otherwise use it.

• We may only retain enough information about you to ensure that the restriction is respected in future.

• If we have disclosed your personal information to others, we must (subject to certain exceptions) contact them to tell them about the restriction on use.

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, you can make a request by contacting dataprotection@royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk.

If you have given us your consent to use any of your personal information, you can withdraw your consent at any time. To do so, please contact us at dataprotection@royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk 

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. If we make any substantial updates, we will provide you with a new privacy notice. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.