WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT?
Qe Soutions (“Qe”) is what’s known as a “Controller” under Data Protection law. This means that 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 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 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).
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 TYPE OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU
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 a curriculum vitae you have provided and any accompanying covering letter you submit, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, educations and employment history and qualifications.
- Any information you provide to us during an interview, which may be used to assess your suitability for the role. In some cases the information may be used to determine a score on your performance which will inform our decision as to whether you are suitable for the role applied for.
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 for equal opportunities monitoring after an offer is made.
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records. In particular, at the interview stage, if relevant to the role you are applying for, we may ask questions about your medical history.
- Information about criminal convictions and offences relevant to the role you have applied for.
HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate.
- Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions (if applicable to the role).
- Your named referees.
- Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency should your role require to you drive and we need to check that you are lawful able to do so.
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.
- Defend or establish any legal rights that we may have.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role you have applied for. We will process your personal data in order to make such as determination as it is necessary for our business interests.
We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you or to engage your services in a non-employment capacity.
Having received your CV and covering letter, and accompanying information, 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 will then take up references, carry out a criminal record (if applicable) and carry out any driving licence check (if applicable) before confirming your appointment.
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 any further. For example, if we require 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 entitled 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 required by our clients to ensure all individuals working on their contracts are DBS checked. Depending on the client and your assigned job role we may require an enhanced DBS check.
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.
DATA SHARING
Why might you share my personal information with third parties?
We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application:
- The Disclosure and Barring Service (if applicable).
- The Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency (if applicable).
- Your named referees, for the purpose of identifying you and obtaining a reference.
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.
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 the Audit and Document Control Manager (details below). 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
How long will you use my information for?
We will retain your application data for a period of no longer than 12 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 with applicable laws and regulations.
We will retain your contact information on file, for the legitimate interest of updating you on further opportunities which may arise in future. We will keep this for a period of 12 months after the date we have communicated our decision to you about the role you have applied for. If you do not wish for your personal information to be retained to hear about future opportunities, please contact careers@mjquinn.co.uk or a member of our Recruitment Team so that you information if not processed in this way and be deleted it if it required for no other lawful purpose.
RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION 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 our Audit and Document Control Manager (details below) in writing.
Audit and Document Control Manager
We have appointed an Audit and Document Control Manager to oversee data protection and compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Audit and Document Control Manager at dataprotection@mjquinn.co.uk. 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.
