Harwood Solicitors – Recruitment Specific Privacy Notice
THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT
Harwood Solicitors is a “data controller”. This means that as a business we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for a position with us (whether as an employee, worker, consultant or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, 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 Data Protection Act 2018.
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 date.
- Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
- Kept securely.
THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
When you make an application for employment 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.
- Any information you provide to us during an interview.
- The results of typing tests and Personal Profiling Reports (if undertaken)
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
- SRA disciplinary record.
- Professional Indemnity Claims history (fee earner recruitment)
- Information about criminal convictions and offences.
HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate.
- The recruitment agency instructed by us in relation to the recruitment exercise, from which we collect the following categories of data: information contained with your CV including previous working history, professional qualifications, current and expected salary, referee details,
- For certain roles and where required by specialist accreditations, basic DBS checks the results of which are sent directly to the Law Society.
- Any software used for on-line typing tests, (speed & accuracy)
- HR outsources services from which we collect the results of personal profiling reports.
- Your named referees, from whom we may collect the following categories of data: attendance and punctuality, honesty, co-operation and team work, efficiency, ability to work with limited supervision, current disciplinary proceedings or warnings, restrictive covenants, sickness record in last two years of employment, time taken under parental leave and re-employability.
- The following data from third parties is from a publicly accessible source – the Solicitors Regulation Authority Website: to conduct a check of the SRA record (for solicitors), searches of the Law Society Website and other professional sites such as Council for Licensed Conveyancers to confirm professional qualifications.
HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU
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.
- 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 or not to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to fill the vacancy. We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment, consultancy arrangement, locum arrangement or self-employed arrangement with you.
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.
HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
- We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during a test or 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.
INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS
We envisage that we will 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 required to carry out a criminal records 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 are legally required by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to carry out criminal record checks for those carrying out particular roles,.
- The role of requires a high degree of trust and integrity since it involves dealing with sensitive client information and client’s money and so, if necessary, we would like to ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history.
We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.
AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.
SHARING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH THIRD PARTIES
We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: for example, recruitment agency instructed in the recruitment exercise. 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.
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.
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.
DATA RETENTION
We will retain your personal information for a period of twelve months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the 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 applicable laws and regulations.
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.
RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION
Your have rights in connection with your personal information and 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 email Zabair Afzal at info@harwoodsolicitors.co.uk in the capacity as Information Security Manager.
RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT
When you applied for this role, you provided consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Zabair Afzal at info@harwoodsolicitors.co.uk. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our retention policy, we will dispose of your personal data securely.
INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGER
We have appointed Zabair Afzal as our Information Security Manager to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please e-mail Zabair Afzal at info@harwoodsolicitors.co.uk or contact her in writing.
COMPLAINTS
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
