ADVANCED RESEARCH AND INVENTION AGENCY

PRIVACY POLICY FOR JOB APPLICANTS

What is the purpose of this document?

Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is 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 provided with a copy of this privacy policy 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.

The kind of information we hold about you:

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.
• The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history and qualifications.
• Any information you provide to us during an interview.
• Results from tests that you took as part of the application process.

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.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.
• Information about your family and relatives.

We provide more information below on How we use particularly sensitive personal information.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

• You, the candidate.
• Recruitment agencies or headhunters from time to time, who typically would act as the point of contact for collection of much of the information you provide to us as part of your application (such as your curriculum vitae), as well as your feedback regarding any interviews and during the application process.
• Any subcontractors we may use, our background check provider, from which we collect the following categories of data: name, contact details and whether you have passed the background checks (as part of the background checks certificate only).
• Credit reference agency.
• Your named referees, from whom we collect the following categories of data: dates of employment and roles held.
• Data from third parties from a publicly accessible source: any information that you have published online on such publicly accessible source, e.g., LinkedIn.

How we will use information about you:

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

• Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
• Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
• Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
• Keep records related to our hiring processes.
• Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to process this personal information to decide whether to appoint you to the role. We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you, and we have legal obligations to collect certain information from you.

If you fail to provide personal information:

If you fail to provide information when 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 personal information (also known as special category data):

Where you provide information to us about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, sexual orientation, political opinions, your health, and criminal convictions, allegations, proceedings and offences which relate to you (Special Category Data), this is subject to special protection under UK law.

We are required by law to explain the legal basis and the safeguards we utilise when we process your Special Category Data and this section of the privacy policy document addresses that requirement.

We will use your Special Category Data in the following ways:

• It is important to us that we make appropriate adjustments for our candidates. If you provide us with information about your disability status, we will be able to consider throughout the recruitment process whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments for you.
• Meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting is important to us. If you provide us with information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, it helps us conduct such equal opportunity monitoring and reporting in a meaningful way.

Where we collect, use and share your Special Category Data (or information about criminal convictions as referred to below) in cases where UK data protection laws apply, we rely upon one or more of the following legal bases:

• With your consent, which you may revoke at any time.
• Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in relation to your employment with us.
• Where it is needed due to substantial public interest, such as for ensuring equal opportunities or in relation to our occupational pension scheme or preventing or detecting an unlawful act.
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
• Where the information has already been made public by you.

To protect your Special Category Data we have put in place procedures to ensure that we:

• Check the accuracy of Special Category Data we collect and correct it where necessary;
• Minimise the amount of Special Category Data we collect; and
• Periodically review any Special Category Data we have obtained so that any such information can be deleted when it is no longer required.

Information about criminal convictions:

We envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions. We will collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). We are entitled to carry out criminal records checks in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role.

Automated decision-making:

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Data sharing

We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application: 

• Any independent panel members; and
• Operating partners – Talentful and Reed.

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.

Cross border data transfers

The personal data we collect from or about you may be transferred to, processed and stored, at destinations outside the UK (for example, the US) as many of our third-party service providers transfer, process and store personal data outside the UK.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to providean adequate level of protection for personal data.
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

Data security

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.

Data retention

We will retain your personal information for a period of 6 months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role. We retain your personal information for that period 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. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request accessto your personal information (commonly known as a subject access request). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may have compelling legitimate grounds to process your data which override your rights and freedoms.
• 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.
• Right to withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact hr@aria.org.uk 

No fee usually required. You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is manifestly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances. 

What we may need from you. 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 data are not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Time limit to respond. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Making a complaint. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Your duty to inform us of changes. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your personal data please contact us at recruitment@aria.org.uk 

Changes to this privacy policy. This policy was last updated in January 2024.