PRIVACY NOTICE FOR JOB APPLICANTS 

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

2. Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police are the ‘Data Controllers’ for the purposes of your personal data; this means that we determine the purpose and means of the processing of your personal data.

3. As part of any recruitment process, the organisation collects and processes personal information or ‘data’ about job applicants. The organisation is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations. 

4. We will collect and use the following types of personal data about you:

• Your name, address, contact details, including e-mail address and telephone number(s);
• Your National Insurance number;
• Details of your education, qualifications, skills, training, membership of professional bodies;
• Your experience and employment history;
• Information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements;
• Whether or not you have a disability for which the organisation needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process;
• Information about your entitlement to work in the UK;
• Equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.

5. The organisation 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 interview or other forms of assessment. 

6. The organisation will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers, information from background check providers and information from criminal records checks (where applicable). The organisation will only seek information from such third parties once a provisional job offer has been made and will inform you that it is doing so. For some roles, the organisation will process personal data about you from open source material e.g. social media.

7. Data will be stored in a range of different places, including in recruitment files, in HR management systems and on other IT systems, including e-mail.

8. The organisation 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. 

9. In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required by law to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts. 

10. The organisation 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 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. 

11. The organisation 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. 

12. Where the organisation processes other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health or religion or belief, this is for equal opportunities monitoring purposes.

13. The organisation is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences. Where the organisation seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment. 

14. The organisation will not, without your consent, use your data for any purpose other than the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.

15. Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the HR/recruitment 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.

16. The organisation may share your data with third parties such as external HR applicant tracking systems, shortlisting or other recruitment/assessment assistance.

17. If your application is successful and the organisation makes you a provisional offer of employment, your data may be shared with former employers (or other referees nominated by you) for reference purposes, employment check providers to obtain necessary background checks and criminal records checks (where applicable). We require those third parties to keep your personal data confidential and secure and to protect it in accordance with the law and our policies.  They are only permitted to process your data for the lawful purpose for which it has been shared and in accordance with our instructions. 

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

19. If your application is successful or unsuccessful the organisation will hold your data on the applicant tracking system for 12 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process.

20. If your application is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. You will be provided with a new Privacy Notice for employees and workers.

Your rights under GDPR

21. 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 correct incorrect or incomplete data; 
• Require the organisation to erase 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 grounds 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. 

22. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact the organisation’s Data Protection Officer as below:
    
    Data Protection Officer
    Knowledge and Information Management Department
    West Mercia Police
    P.O. Box 55
    Hindlip
    Worcester
    WR3 8SP
    Email: dataprotectionofficer@warwickshireandwestmercia.pnn.police.uk

23. In addition, if you believe the organisation has not complied with your data protection rights you can complain to the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) as below:
    
    www.ico.org.uk
    The Information Commissioner’s Office,
    Wycliffe House,
    Water Lane,
    Wilmslow,
    Cheshire,
    SK9 5AF 

What if you do not provide personal data?

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

25. 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  

26. The recruitment process does rely on automated decision- making as part of the pre screening application stage of the process.