Aberdein Considine, HR Department, 5 - 7 Bon Accord Crescent, Aberdeen, AB11 6DN
01224 337390 / 0141 227 8203 / 0131 221 2422 or hr@acandco.com
Aberdein Considine, DPO, 74 High Street, Perth PH1 5TH
01738 473016 or DPO@acandco.com
As part of any recruitment process, the firm collects and processes personal information, or personal data, relating to job applicants. This personal information may be held by the firm on paper or in electronic format.
The firm is committed to being transparent about how it handles your personal information, to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information and to meeting its data protection obligations under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The purpose of this privacy notice is to make you aware of how and why we will collect and use your personal information during the recruitment process. We are required under the UK GDPR to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
This privacy notice applies to all job applicants, whether they apply for a role directly or indirectly through an employment / recruitment agency. It is non-contractual.
The firm has appointed a Data Protection Officer to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or about how we handle your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer as per above.
Under the UK GDPR, there are six data protection principles that the firm must comply with. These provide that the personal information we hold about you must be:
The firm is responsible for, and must be able to demonstrate compliance with, these principles. This is called accountability.
Personal information is any information about an individual from which that person can be directly or indirectly identified. It doesn’t include anonymised data i.e. where all identifying particulars have been removed. There are also “special categories” of personal information, and personal information on criminal convictions and offences, which requires a higher level of protection because it is of a more sensitive nature. The special categories of personal information comprises of information about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health, sex life or sexual orientation and genetic and biometric data.
The firm collects, uses and processes a range of personal information about you during the recruitment process. This includes (as applicable):
The firm may also collect, use and process the following special categories of your personal information during the recruitment process (as applicable):
The firm collects personal information about you during the recruitment process either directly from you or sometimes from a third party such as an employment / recruitment agency. We may also collect personal information from other external third parties, such as references from current and former employers, information from background check providers i.e. Veriphy, information from credit reference agencies i.e. Equifax and criminal record checks from Disclosure Scotland and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). Other than employment / recruitment agencies, the firm will only seek personal information from third parties during the recruitment process once an offer of a Partnership Agreement, employment or engagement has been made to you and we will inform you that we are doing so.
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide personal information to the firm during the recruitment process.
Your personal information may be stored in different places, including in the firm’s HR management system and in other IT systems, such as the e-mail system.
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. These are known as the legal bases for processing. We will use your personal information in one or more of the following circumstances:
We need all the types of personal information listed under ‘What types of personal information do we collect about you?’ primarily to enable us to take steps at your request to enter into an agreement or contract with you (1), and to enable us to comply with our legal obligations (2). In some cases, we may also use your personal information where it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), provided that your interests or your fundamental rights and freedoms do not override our interests (3). Our legitimate interests include:
We have indicated, by using (1), (2) or (3) next to each type of personal information listed above, what lawful basis we are relying on to process that particular type of personal information.
The purposes for which we are processing, or will process, your personal information are to:
Please note that we may process your personal information without your consent, in compliance with these rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
If you fail to provide certain personal information when requested, we may not be able to process your job application properly or at all, we may not be able to enter into an agreement or contract with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations. You may also be unable to exercise your statutory rights.
We will only collect and use your sensitive personal information, which includes special categories of personal information and information about criminal convictions and offences, when the law additionally allows us to.
Some special categories of personal information i.e. information about your health, and information about criminal convictions and offences, is also processed so that we can perform or exercise our obligations or rights under employment law and in line with our data protection policy.
We may also process information about your health and information about any criminal convictions and offences where we have your explicit written consent. In this case, we will first provide you with full details of the personal information we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can properly consider whether you wish to consent or not. It is entirely your choice whether to consent. Your consent can be withdrawn at any time.
The purposes for which we are processing, or will process, health information and information about any criminal convictions and offences, are to:
Where the firm processes other special categories of personal information i.e. information about your racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs and sexual orientation, this is done only for the purpose of equal opportunities monitoring in recruitment and in line with our data protection policy. Personal information that the firm uses for these purposes is either anonymised or is collected with your explicit written consent, which can be withdrawn at any time. It is entirely your choice whether to provide such personal information.
We may also occasionally use your special categories of personal information, and information about any criminal convictions and offences, where it is needed for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it i.e. for the recruitment exercise for which you have applied.
However, if your job application is unsuccessful, the firm may wish to keep your personal information on file for in case there are future suitable employment opportunities with us. We will ask for your consent before we keep your personal information on file for this purpose. Your consent can be withdrawn at any time.
Your personal information may be shared internally within the firm for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, including with members of the HR department, managers in the department which has the vacancy and IT staff if access to your personal information is necessary for the performance of their roles.
The firm will not share your personal information with third parties during the recruitment process unless your job application is successful and we make you an offer of a partnership, employment or engagement. At that stage, we may also share your personal information with third parties (and their designated agents), including:
We may also need to share your personal information with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.
We may share your personal information with third parties where it is necessary, and at your request, to enter into an agreement or contract with you, or to enter into an agreement or contract with you, where we need to comply with a legal obligation, or where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party).
The firm has put in place measures to protect the security of your personal information. It has internal policies, procedures and controls in place to try and prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost or destroyed, altered, disclosed or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those partners, employees, workers, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know in order to perform their job duties and responsibilities. You can obtain further information about these measures from our Data Protection Officer.
Where your personal information is shared with third parties, we require all third parties to take appropriate technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal information and to treat it subject to a duty of confidentiality and in accordance with data protection law. We only allow them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our written instructions and we do not allow them to use your personal information for their own purposes.
The firm also has in place procedures to deal with a suspected data security breach and we will notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (or any other applicable supervisory authority or regulator) and you of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
The firm will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and processed.
If your application for a partnership, employment or engagement is unsuccessful, the firm will generally hold your personal information for six months after the end of the relevant recruitment exercise but this is subject to:
If you have consented to the firm keeping your personal information on file for in case there are future suitable partnership or employment opportunities with us, the firm will hold your personal information for a further six months after the end of the relevant recruitment exercise, or until you withdraw your consent if earlier.
If your application for a partnership, employment or engagement is successful, personal information gathered during the recruitment process will be retained for the duration of your partnership, employment or engagement and in accordance with the privacy notice for partners, employees, workers and contractors.
Personal information which is no longer to be retained will be securely and effectively destroyed or permanently erased from our IT systems and we will also require third parties to destroy or erase such personal information where applicable.
In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal information so that it no longer permits your identification. In this case, we may retain such information for a longer period.
As a data subject, you have a number of statutory rights. Subject to certain conditions, and in certain circumstances, you have the right to:
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer or complete the electronic form on the firm’s website. We may need to request specific information from you in order to verify your identity and check your right to access the personal information or to exercise any of your other rights. This is a security measure to ensure that your personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
In the limited circumstances where you have provided your consent to the processing of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. This will not however, affect the lawfulness of processing based on your consent before its withdrawal. If you wish to withdraw your consent, please contact our Data Protection Officer. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information for the purpose you originally agreed to, unless we have another legal basis for processing.
If you believe that the firm has not complied with your data protection rights, you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at any time.
The firm will not transfer your personal information to third countries or international organisations.
Automated decision making occurs when an electronic system uses your personal information to make a decision without human intervention.
We do not envisage that any recruitment decisions will be taken about you based solely on automated decision-making, including profiling.
The firm reserves the right to update or amend this privacy notice at any time. We will issue you with a new privacy notice when we make significant updates or amendments. We may also notify you about the processing of your personal information in other ways.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer; details provided at the top of the page.