Recruitment privacy policy

As part of our recruitment process, Spring Fibre collects and processes personal data relating to applicants and potential employees. We are committed to being transparent about how we collect, use and store data, as well as meeting our data protection obligations under the GDPR.

We are a “controller” in relation to personal data. 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 with us (whether as an employee, worker or contractor). It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, 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 under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK 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 told you about and limited only to those purposes.
Accurate and kept up to date.
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
Kept securely.

Data collected by Spring Fibre in the recruitment process
In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you, such data may include:

Information you have provided us in your curriculum vitae (CV), covering letter or application form including your name, title address and contact details (including email address, address and telephone numbers), date of birth and gender.
Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history.
Information about your salary expectations (which may include current salary and benefit entitlements) .
Any information which you provide us during an interview.

We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:

Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records including whether or not you have a disability for which Spring Fibre needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process and potential employment.
Information about criminal convictions and offences.
Information about your right to work in the UK.

How do we collect this information?
Spring Fibre may collect this information in a number of ways using the following sources:

You the candidate
Recruitment agencies, from which we collect the following categories of data: CV details including name, job and experience history and qualifications.
Background check providers, from which we collect the following categories of data: right to work, disclosure and barring Service in respect of criminal convictions.
Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: start and end dates, job title and performance and attendance of previous role of previous employment.
Identity, contact and job history and experience data from a publicly accessible source such as Companies House, social media, LinkedIn, Totaljobs and other job board sites.

Please note that we will seek information from former employers only once a job offer has been made to you and will inform you that we are doing so in advance.

Data may also be stored in a number of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems (including email).

Spring Fibre’s need to process personal data
Spring Fibre will process data collected 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 process
Ensure that we are complying with our legal obligations, such as mandatory checks of a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK or a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check prior to commencing employment.

We have a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process to assess and confirm applicant suitability for each role, ultimately deciding whether to shortlist you for a role, invite you to interview and from all information processed, decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and/or carry out a criminal record and any other applicable checks before confirming your appointment.

We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment or engagement with you (as the case may be).We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

If you do not provide personal data
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide personal data to Spring Fibre during the recruitment process. However, if you choose not to provide the information 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 information
Spring Fibre may process special categories of data, such as information about gender, race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, sexual orientation, religion or belief, health and disability status in order to:

Monitor recruitment statistics and to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting;
Ensure that we can make reasonable adjustments for candidates during the recruitment process who do have a disability.

Information about criminal convictions and background checks
We may ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history. We will ask for your consent to share the results of your checks, which we will hold in your employee record. We have in place an appropriate safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing and storing such data.

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 of processing your application: recruitment consultants. 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.

Protection of your data
We take our data protection obligations very seriously at Spring Fibre. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed by parties other than our employees. Agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.

Period of time that data is kept
If your application for employment is unsuccessful at any stage in the process, we will hold your data on file for 6 (six) months after the end of the relevant recruitment process.

We may retain your personal information for longer periods so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way.

If you agree to us keeping your personal data on file, we will hold your data on file for a further 6 (six) months for consideration of future employment opportunities. At the end of this period, or once your consent has been withdrawn if sooner, your data is deleted or destroyed.

You will be asked when you submit your CV whether you give us consent to store your data for the full 12 months in order to be considered for alternative positions. If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your HR file (which may be electronic or paper based) and retained throughout the course of your employment. The periods for which your data will be held thereafter are in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

Your rights as a data subject
You have a number of enforceable rights:

To access and obtain a copy of your personal data on request;
To require Spring Fibre to change incorrect or incomplete data;
To require Spring Fibre to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the intended purposes of processing;
To object to the processing of your data where Spring Fibre is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing;
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 would like to exercise any of your rights as above, please contact us on contact@springfibre.com. If you do not consider that Spring Fibre has complied with your relevant data protection rights, you can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office .