UK GDPR Candidate privacy notice
What is the purpose of this document?
Sygnature Discovery Limited 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 are being provided with 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 UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).
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.
Who is your personal information collected from?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
- You, the candidate – which may include information that you share with us directly or information that you enter / provide via TeamTailor – this platform.
- Via recruitment agencies from time to time, from which we may collect your curriculum vitae, application and other information you provide to the recruitment agency in relation to your application for the role..
- Your named referees, from whom information based on whether it is a personal or professional reference, and will relate to your application for the role
- From third party sources that are publicly accessible, such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and other similar recruitment resources to the extent that the information is publicly accessible.
The kind 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 your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
- The information you have provided on our application form, including name, address, telephone number, personal email address, education history, qualifications and employment history
- Any information you provide to us during the interview and/or screening processes.
- Information obtained from sources other than yourself previously referred to in this notice.
This may involve us collecting, storing and using the following types of more sensitive personal information:
- Information about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sexual orientation and political opinions.
- Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
- Information about criminal convictions and offences.
How we will use information about you
We may process your personal data for the following legitimate business purposes:
- Identifying and evaluating job applicants, including assessing skills, qualifications, and interests for the purposes of determining suitability for the position for which you have applied.
- Verifying your information and carrying out employment, background, and reference checks, where applicable, subject to your consent where required by applicable law.
- Communicating with you about the recruitment process and your application.
- Keeping records related to our hiring processes, for only as long as appropriate under the circumstances.
- Complying with our legal or regulatory requirements.
- Analyzing and improving our application and recruitment process.
We will also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment 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
Where appropriate we will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
- We use information about disability to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview.
- We use information about racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs, disability or sexual orientation to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
Information about criminal convictions
We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.
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 disclose your personal data to third parties where required by law or to our employees, contractors, designated agents, other group companies or third-party service providers who require such information to assist us with administering the recruitment process, including third-party service providers who provide services to us or on our behalf. We may use third-party service providers for various purposes, including, but not limited to, obtaining employment verification and background checks, and data storage or hosting. These third-party service providers may be located outside of the country in which you live or the country where the position you have applied for is located.
We require all our third-party service providers, by written contract, to implement appropriate security measures to protect your personal data consistent with our policies and any data security obligations applicable to us. We do not permit our third-party service providers to process your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes 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, group companies 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
How long will you use my information for?
Except as otherwise permitted or required by applicable law or regulation, we will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, as required to satisfy any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements, or as necessary to resolve disputes. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider our statutory obligations, the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes we process your personal data for, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means.
If we would like to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that we might be able to consider you for an opportunity that may arise in future, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period for that purpose.
Under some circumstances we may anonymize your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you. We reserve the right to use such anonymous and de- identified data for any legitimate business purpose without further notice to you or your consent.
If you are offered and accept employment with Sygnature Discovery, the personal data we collected during the application and recruitment process may become part of your employment record, and we may use it in connection with your employment consistent with our employee personal data policies. If you do not become an employee, or, once you are no longer an employee of Sygnature Discovery, we will retain and securely destroy your personal data in accordance applicable laws and regulations.
Rights of access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction and data portability
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 making 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 rectification 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 Sygnature Discovery’s HR Team whose contact details are HR@SygnatureDiscovery.com
Right to withdraw consent (optional paragraph)
You have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Sygnature Discovery’s HR Team whose contact details are HR@SygnatureDiscovery.com. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our internal policies, we will dispose of your personal data securely.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
We reserve the right to update this Privacy Notice at any time. If we would like to use your previously collected personal data for different purposes than those, we notified you about at the time of collection, we will provide you with notice and, where required by law, seek your consent, before using your personal data for a new or unrelated purpose. We may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent only where required by applicable law or regulation.
Questions or complaints
If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact Sygnature Discovery’s HR Team whose contact details are HR@SygnatureDiscovery.com and who have been appointed to oversee compliance with this privacy notice.
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.
