Applicant Privacy Notice

Last Revised: 2nd April 2020

As part of any recruitment process, Adlens Limited collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect and use that data and to meeting our data protection obligations.

Adlens collects a range of information about you. This may include:

  • your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number;
  • details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history;
  • information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
  • whether or not you have a disability for which we need to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
  • information about your entitlement to work in the UK; and
  • equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, and religion or belief.

We may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, from other sources where you have made your personal information publicly available for the purposes of recruitment on jobs boards such as LinkedIn (or other publicly available social media networks and databases) or obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online tests.

We may also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers and information from criminal records checks (if you have accepted a role). We will only process information about criminal convictions and offences where we have obtained your explicit consent or where permitted by applicable laws (and then only when necessary for the purposes mentioned below). Where we are processing personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time where there is no other legal basis for the processing.

Data will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

Adlens has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

In some cases, we need to process data to ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations. For example, where required by local law to check that you are eligible to work in the UK before employment starts.

In addition, Adlens may process information about whether or not applicants are disabled so we can make reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability. Where we process other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, religion or belief, age, gender or marital status, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring with the explicit consent of job applicants, which can be withdrawn at any time.

Your information may be shared internally and externally for the purposes of the recruitment process. This includes members of the business involved in recruitment such as HR, Managers, Administrators, IT and externally with recruitment agencies, HR Consultants, online testing providers, as applicable.

We will not share your data with third parties, other than outlined above, unless we make you an offer of employment. In those circumstances, we will share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, and where appropriate employment background check providers to obtain necessary background checks and the Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain necessary criminal records checks.

We will not transfer your data to countries outside the European Economic Area.

Adlens takes the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, Adlens will hold your data on file for 6 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. At the end of that period your data is deleted from our records.

You are free to withdraw your consent at any time. Please email data.protection@adlens.com to let us know if you wish to withdraw your consent.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your HR personnel file and we shall issue a new privacy notice and data retention register which set down the periods for which your data will be held.

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to Adlens during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, we may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

Recruitment processes at Adlens are not based on automated decision-making.

Screening Check

As part of Adlens recruitment process, we perform a background screening, where permitted by local law. These checks are only performed if you have been selected for the role. Your consent will be requested before we perform the background screenings.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with our background screening provider, who will only use it for the purposes as described above. For more information please contact data.protection@adlens.com. The background screening for criminal record checks are essential to ensure that the people we employ can be relied upon to:

  • deal with our clients or stakeholders;
  • handle our clients or stakeholders’ commercially sensitive and confidential information (e.g. highly technical confidential information, intellectual property rights)
  • ensure the safety and security of our employees.

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

  • access and obtain a copy of your data by making a subject access request;
  • require Adlens to change incorrect or incomplete data;
  • require Adlens to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing;
  • object to the processing of your data where Adlens is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
  • ask Adlens to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override Adlens legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact data.protection@adlens.com.

If you believe that Adlens has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner (https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/).