What is the purpose of this document?

Benchmark Recruit Limited is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use our clients’ personal information.  You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because your organisation has used our services (whether to appoint an employee, worker, contractor or hire). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used 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 ((EU) 2016/679) (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.

The kind of information we hold about your organisation

In connection with your engagement of our recruitment services we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you and your organisation:

• Name and email
• Vacancy details
• Credit search of company

How personal information is collected

We collect personal information about clients from the following sources:

• You, the client
• Your company website where business contact information is stored

How we will use your information

We will use the personal information we collect to:

• Contact you about candidates suitable for your job roles.
• 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.

If you fail to provide requested information

If you fail to provide information which is necessary for us to consider your vacancy when requested, we will not be able to fulfil it. For example, if we require a credit check for this role and you fail to provide us with relevant details.

Automated decision-making

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

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent 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 and your organisation’s data for a period of up to 10 years after we have initially made contact with you / your organisation. We retain your / your organisation’s data for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against clients or candidates on prohibited grounds. We will also retain information for this period to ensure that, if you return to us for services, we have a record of your instructions and can process our work with you on a more effective basis. After this period, we will securely destroy your and your organisation’s data.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that further opportunities may arise in the future and we may wish to consider your organisation for them, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a period on that basis. This consent will normally be sought in the form of correspondence with you.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

With regards your 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 Benchmark’s Data Protection Officer in writing the data privacy manager in writing at Wizu Workspace, 32 Eyre Street, Sheffield, S1 4QZ.

Right to withdraw consent

When your organisation instructed Benchmark to recruit for your vacancy 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 Benchmark’s Data Protection Officer. 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.

Data Protection Officer

We have appointed a data privacy 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 contact the data privacy manager. 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.