USP College collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The college is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.
What information does the college collect?
The college collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes (but is not limited to):
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number, date of birth and gender;
- details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history, including start and end dates, with previous employers and with the college; information about your current remuneration, including entitlement to benefits such as pensions or insurance cover;
- information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK;
- information regarding your criminal record (i.e. Enhanced DBS Check);
- information about medical or health conditions, including whether or not you have a disability for which the college needs to make reasonable adjustments;
- equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, and health
The college collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data is collected through application forms, CVs or resumes; obtained from your passport or other identity documents such as your driving licence; from forms completed by you at the start of or during employment (such as benefit nomination forms); from correspondence with you; or through interviews, meetings or other assessments.
In some cases, the college collects personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers, information from credit reference agencies and information from criminal records checks permitted by law.
Data is stored in a range of different places, including in your electronic personnel file, in the college's HR management systems and in other IT systems (including the college's email system).
How will we use the information about you?
We will hold your information safely and securely in line with the Data Protection Law including the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), a new regulation which replaces the Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC). The regulations came into effect on 25th May 2018. We collect information about you to process your application, communicate with you during the recruitment process, invite you to interview and if successful, share with the relevant teams within our organisation to make all the arrangements prior to your start date
Why does the college process personal data?
The college needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into an employment contract with you. We may also need to process data to meet its obligations under your employment contract. For example, it needs to process your data to provide you with an employment contract.
In some cases, the college needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, we are required to check an employee's entitlement to work in the UK, to deduct tax, to comply with health and safety laws and to enable employees to take periods of leave to which they are entitled. As we are an education institution it is also necessary to carry out criminal records checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake roles within the college working with children and vulnerable adults.
We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims;
Where the college relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.
Where the college processes other special categories of personal data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring. Data that the college uses for these purposes is anonymised or is collected with the express consent of employees, which can be withdrawn at any time. Employees are entirely free to decide whether or not to provide such data and there are no consequences of failing to do so.
If your application is unsuccessful, USP college, may keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. We will ask for your consent before we keep your data for this purpose and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time.
Who has access to data?
Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes, but is not limited to, members of the Human Resources team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles. We will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. However, data will be shared with third parties prior to an offer of employment for candidates who, as part of the interview process, are requested to undertake psychometric testing. Following an offer of employment, we will share your data with former employers to obtain references for you.
How does the college protect data?
The college takes the security of your data seriously. The college has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.
Relevant policies:
- Data Protection Policy
- Freedom of Information Policy
- Acceptable Use Policy
- Email Use Policy
- Social Media Policy
Where the college engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.
For how long does USP College keep data?
If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the organisation will delete/destroy all right to work, DBS Check documents and education/training certificates. We will hold all other recruitment data on file for 6 (six) months after the end of the relevant recruitment process, unless there is a specific business reason for the data to be retained for longer, such as responding to a complaint / court proceedings. At the end of that period, or unless you withdraw your consent for the data to be held, your data is deleted or destroyed. If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your Human Resources file (electronic and paper based) and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in a new privacy notice.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data on request;
- require the college to change incorrect or incomplete data;
- require the college 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 the college is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
- ask the college to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the college's legitimate grounds for processing data.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact dataprotection@uspcollege.ac.uk
If you believe that the college has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.
What if you do not provide personal data?
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to USP College 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.