Candidate Policy

As a responsible recruitment consultancy, we ensure that your personal details are respectfully managed.  Please see further information about our candidate policy below.

Candidate Policy

As a responsible recruitment consultancy, we ensure that your personal details are respectfully managed.  Please see further information about our candidate policy below.

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 personal information about you. You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work via us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be sued, 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 used 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 clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with 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

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, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history, qualifications.
  • Any information you provide to us during an interview

We may also collect, store and use the following ‘special categories’ of more sensitive personal information:

  • Information about your health and disability, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
  • 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.
  • Job boards where your CV or employment history has been uploaded by you; including and not exclusive to Indeed, Reed, CV Library, Total Jobs, Jobsite, Monster and Linkedin
  • Your name referees supplied by you, from whom we collect the following categories of data: previous employment history and performance in current or previous job roles.

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 an 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 to submit you to our clients role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.

We also need to process your personal information to assist you in your job search and represent you in your search for work.

Having received your application we will then process that information to decide whether to 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 to your role) and perform background checks 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 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 to any part of our process.
  • 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 in order to submit you to client for a job role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We are required to carry out a criminal record check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for a role.

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 your 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 or processing your application: your CV including personal information will be sent to clients. 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

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 personal information for 10 years unless we are instructed to remove by you. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have no discriminated against candidates on prohibited groups and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information.

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 period on that basis. This consent will normally be sought in the form of correspondence with you.

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 enable you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected
  • Object to processing of your persona 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 the data privacy manager in writing.

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 the data privacy manager in writing at Wizu Workspace, 32 Eyre Street, Sheffield, S1 4QZ. 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 Officer (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.