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Candidate privacy notice

Home / Candidate privacy notice

As part of our recruitment process, the firm collects and processes personal data relating to candidates. The firm is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

What information does the firm collect?

It collects a range of information about you. This includes:

  • 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 the firm needs 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.

The firm collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment including psychometric tests. Recruitment agencies also regularly provide personal data, primarily in the form of candidate CVs.

The firm will 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. The firm will seek information from third parties only once a job offer to you has been made and will inform you that it is doing so.

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).

How will the firm use information about you

Wright Hassall will use the personal information we collect about you to:

  • Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the work or role.
  • 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.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to a role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that vacancy.

The firm also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

Why does the firm process personal data?

It needs to process data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you. It also needs to process your data to enter into a contract with you.

In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal and regulatory obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant's eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts, and for some employees it is required to check eligibility and qualification criteria with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

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

The firm processes health information if it needs to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Where the firm processes 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.

For some roles, the firm is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions/offences, and also about financial probity. Where it seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary for it to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

The firm will not use your data for any purpose other than recruitment. If your application is unsuccessful, it may keep your personal data on file for up to 9 months in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. You are free to withdraw your consent to this retention of data at any time.

Who has access to data?

Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, other recruitment decision-makers in the firm and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

The firm will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and it makes you an offer of employment. The organisation will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you, employment background check providers and (where required) regulatory bodies to obtain necessary background checks and the Disclosure and Barring Service to obtain necessary criminal records checks.

The organisation will not transfer your data outside the European Economic Area.

How does the firm protect data?

The organisation takes the security of your data seriously. It has 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.

For how long does the firm keep data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, the organisation will hold your data on file for up to 9 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. At the end of that period, or if you withdraw your consent to retain the information during the period, 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 personnel file 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 organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data;
  • require the organisation 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 organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing; and
  • ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the organisation's legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Data Protection Contact on compliance@wrighthassall.co.uk.

If you believe that the organisation 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 the firm during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the firm may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.

Automated decision-making

Recruitment processes are not based solely on automated decision-making.