Careers at Geldards

Geldards LLP (“we”, “us”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice sets out the basis on which the personal data collected from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us in connection with our recruitment processes.

Geldards LLP is a law firm with offices in Cardiff, Derby, Nottingham and London. We are a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales (partnership number OC313172). Our registered office is at 4 Capital Quarter, Tyndall Street, Cardiff, CF10 4BZ. You can find our contact details here. We are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (“SRA”). We are also registered with the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”).

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) the Data Controller is Geldards LLP.

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. Under data protection law, Geldards LLP is a “data controller”. This means that we hold personal information about, individuals including you as a job applicant and are responsible for deciding how we store and use that personal information. As a data controller, we are legally required to provide certain information to individuals whose personal information we collect, obtain, store and use.
That information is contained in this document (our “privacy notice”). It is important that you read this document (together with any other privacy notices we may provide to you on specific occasions), so that you are aware of how and why we are using your personal information and the rights you have in relation to your personal information. This privacy notice applies to all job applicants.

We use Pinpoint, an online software product provided by The Infuse Group Ltd (t/a Pinpoint Software), to assist with our recruitment process. We use Pinpoint to process personal information as a data processor on our behalf. Pinpoint is only entitled to process your personal data in accordance with our instructions

Where you apply for an opportunity posted by us, these Privacy Notice provisions will apply to our processing of your personal information, in addition to our other Privacy Notice which is available on our website.

Your Personal Information

Information we collect from you

As part of the recruitment and selection process we will obtain certain personal information from you. Some information will be provided in the job application form and further information may be provided by you and recorded by us during any interview process.

Data protection law protects personal information which is essentially any information from which an individual can be identified. There is a type of personal information which receives additional protection because of its sensitive or private nature, this is sometimes referred to as ‘special category personal information’ and means personal information about an individual’s race, ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership (or non-membership), genetics information, biometric information (where used to identify an individual) and information concerning an individual’s health, sex life or sexual orientation.

This information is collected either directly from you or sometimes from an employment agency. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including your referees, your education provider, the Home Office and the Disclosure and Barring Service and online facilities.

This information will include:

Your name, address and contact details*;
Your gender;
Your education and qualifications*;
Your academic and professional qualifications*;
Your skills, experience and membership of professional bodies*;
Your National Insurance number*;
Evidence of your ability to work in the UK, your nationality and immigration status*;
Information provided from your previous employer(s) and other referees*;
Other personal information you might provide on your application form or monitoring form and/or during any interview and selection process

Information we collect from other sources

Pinpoint provides us with the facility to link the data you provide to us with other publicly available information about you that you have published on the Internet – this may include sources such as LinkedIn and other social media profiles.

Pinpoint’s technology enables us to search various databases, which may include your personal data, to find possible candidates to fill our job openings. Where we find you in this way we will obtain your personal data from these sources.

Uses made of your information

Lawful basis for processing

We rely on legitimate interest as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal data. Our legitimate interests are the recruitment of staff for our business.

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

We use the personal information we hold about you for a number of different purposes, which we list below. Under data protection law we need to have a valid legal basis for using your personal information, we also set out below the legal bases which we will be relying upon.

There may be circumstances where we need to process your special category personal information, particularly relating to your health, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent.

For recruitment purposes, we will use your personal information for:
Processing is in our legitimate interests, specifically:

To progress your application,
arrange interviews and inform you of outcomes;
To make an informed decision to shortlist for interview and (if relevant) recruit;
To provide and demonstrate a fair and reasonable recruitment process;
To employ the best candidates for the roles we have available;
To comply with and demonstrate compliance with our legal obligations as an employer and any other applicable laws;
To comply with and demonstrate compliance with our policies and procedures relating to job applicants.

What Special Category Personal Information do we hold about you and how do we use it?
We will need to keep certain special category personal information in relation to you which might be relevant to your recruitment, such as your:

racial or ethnic origins
political opinions
religious or philosophical beliefs
membership of a trade union
physical or mental health (including details of any disability)
sexual orientation
details of any known disability
commission or alleged commission of any offence, including the results of Disclosure and Barring Service (‘DBS’) checks

We use the special category personal information we hold about you for the following reasons:

To monitor equality and diversity :

In this case the condition we rely upon for processing the information is to monitor equality and diversity which is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, namely for the purposes of identifying or keeping under review the existence or absence of equality of opportunity or treatment between groups of people specified in relation to that category with a view to enabling such equality to be promoted or maintained.

To comply with and demonstrate compliance with employment law and best practice and any other applicable laws, to assess your fitness for work, to make any reasonable adjustments to your role:

In these cases, the conditions we rely upon for processing the information are because it is necessary for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights in the field of employment law

In cases where a claim has been brought against the Company or there is a potential risk of a legal dispute or claim we may need to process your special category personal information:

In these cases, we will rely on the fact that processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise and defence of legal claims.

We will only collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so.

We will only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, namely, preventing or detecting unlawful acts, protecting the public against dishonesty, preventing fraud or suspicion of terrorism or money laundering.

membership of a trade union
physical or mental health (including details of any disability)
sexual orientation
details of any known disability
commission or alleged commission of any offence, including the results of Disclosure and Barring Service (‘DBS’) checks

We use the special category personal information we hold about you for a number of different purposes, which we list below. Data protection law prohibits us from processing any special category personal information unless we can satisfy at least one of the conditions laid down by data protection law.

We also set out below the specific conditions we rely upon when processing special category data. We use the special category personal information we hold about you for the following reasons: 5 G Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary 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.

Purposes of processing

We use information held about you in the following ways:

To consider your application in respect of a role for which you have applied.
To consider your application in respect of other roles.
To communicate with you in respect of the recruitment process.
To enhance any information that we receive from you with information obtained from third party data providers.
To find appropriate candidates to fill our job openings.
To help Pinpoint improve their services.

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.
If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Some of the personal data we request will be because we have a legal or contractual requirement to obtain and use the information or it is necessary for us to obtain the information to be able to enter into a contract with you (such information is marked with an * above).
An example of this would be under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 we are required to satisfy ourselves that you have the right to work in the UK. Failure to provide certain information will prevent us from employing or engaging you or from performing the contract we have entered into with you.

Who do we share your information with?
Your personal data will be held by the HR department. Your personal data will be shared internally with other individuals and/or departments where this is reasonably necessary for the processing purposes set out in section 2 above.

For example, HR will need to share your personal data with the department whose vacancy you have applied for.

From time to time we will need to share your information with external people and organisations:

Your information may be disclosed to the referees you have provided on your application form in order to obtain references and/or with education, professional and vocational establishments to verify information you have provided on your application form or during any interview process. We will only do so where we have a legitimate or legal basis for doing so and in compliance with our obligations under data protection laws.
We may also need to share your personal information where we are legally obliged to do so, and/or with the Police, local authorities, the courts and any other government department, such as the Home Office and the DBS (but only if us doing so is lawful) and/or with our professional advisors when they need it to give us their professional advice.

Automated decision making / profiling

We may leverage Pinpoint’s technology to help us select appropriate candidates for us to consider based on criteria we have identified. The process of finding suitable candidates is automatic, however, any decision as to who we will engage to fill the job opening will be made by our team.

How we store your personal data

Security

We take appropriate measures to ensure that all personal data is kept secure including security measures to prevent personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in any unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal data to those who have a genuine business need to view it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted through any online means, therefore any transmission remains at your own risk.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you and process using Pinpoint’s Services will be transferred to and stored at one of several datacentre locations in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and may be synchronised to one of several datacentre locations in London (United Kingdom) for backup and redundancy purposes. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing.

How long we keep your personal data

We retain all candidate data for a period of 48 months from the time of application. Your personal information will be deleted on one of the following occurrences:

Deletion of your personal information by you via the Manage Your Data tool or
Receipt of a written request by you to us.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights. In summary, those include rights to:

access to your personal data and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address
require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold
request the erasure of personal data concerning you in certain situations
request access to the personal data concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations
object at any time to processing of personal data concerning you for direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you
object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data
otherwise restrict our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances
claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please either:

utilise the Manage Your Data tool provided or
contact us using our contact details below, ensuring we have enough information to identify you, proving your identity and address and confirming which information to which your request relates

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Where your personal data is processed on the basis of your consent or explicit consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time. You can do this by emailing information.compliance@geldards.com. Any withdrawal of consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing of your personal data based on consent before the withdrawal is notified.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred.

You can make a complaint to a supervisory authority at any time about the way we use your information. However, we hope that you would consider raising any issue or complaint you have with us first. We will always do our very best to solve any problems you may have

We review the ways we use your information regularly. In doing so, we may change what kind of information we collect, how we store it, who we share it with and how we act on it.
Consequently, we will need to change this privacy notice from time to time to keep it accurate and up-to-date.
We will keep this notice under regular review to ensure it is accurate and kept up to date

To view our Geldards website privacy policy, please click here.