Job applicants

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
6. Kept securely.

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

We may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
• Qualifications, skills, experience and employment history
• Current remuneration and notice period
• Equalities monitoring data including date of birth, sex, disability and marital status
• National insurance number
• References

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information: 

• Disability data
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.

We typically collect personal information about job applicants directly through our recruitment process. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former employers and background check agencies.

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

1. Where we need to perform the contract (your contract of employment) we have entered into with you (or in preparation of that contract).
2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
3. Where it is needed as a key part of our core tasks as a publically supported university (these will be tasks in the public interest for our official purposes as a public body).
4. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests (where we are processing your data for purpose outside our public tasks as a publically supported university)
5. Where you have explicitly agreed to a particular use of your data (consent)

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).

Condition 1 above will include:

• Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment, transferring data to your employment record

Condition 2 above may include:

• Some equality monitoring requirements and eligibility to work in the UK.

Condition 3 or 4 may apply include:

• Checking successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts
• Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

”Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

1. In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
2. Where we need to carry out our legal obligations and in line with our Data Protection Policy.
3. Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring, and in line with our Data Protection Policy.
4. Where it is needed to for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine or for the assessment of your working capacity, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
5. Where it is necessary for reasons of public health

Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent; or where you have already made the information public.

Our obligations as a recruiter

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways: 

• We will use information about your disability status to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process and in the administration of our obligations as a Disability Confident employer
  We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Do we need your consent?

We do not need your consent if we use special categories of your personal information in accordance with our written policy to carry out our legal obligations or exercise specific rights in the field of employment law. In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain particularly sensitive data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent. You should be aware that it is not a condition of your contract with us that you agree to any request for consent from us.

We will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences to manage our obligations to prevent and detect unlawful acts; to protect the public against dishonesty; preventing fraud and safeguarding children and vulnerable individuals.

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers.

We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We may transfer your personal information outside the EU.

If we do, you can expect a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information.

We use a number of cloud based service providers who will or may store your personal data. These include Google, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft as part of email and cloud storage provision. 

The University has a statutory requirement to share some of your personal data with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).This forms your HESA staff record which does not contain your name or contact details.

We may also share your data with Health Service provider (e.g. as part of Occupation Health services); with Learing providers and with the UKVI

Research applications: if you engage in research funding application, we may be required to share your data concerning career summary and salary details with collaborating institutions and/or funding bodies.

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available at https://www.keele.ac.uk/informationsecurity/

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal information are available in our retention policy which is available from https://www.keele.ac.uk/recordsmanagement/recordsretentionschedule/. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the company we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our Data Retention Policy.

You have a number of rights with regards to how we process your information including access, correction, erasure and restriction.

Full details of these rights and how to exercise them can be found here.