Data controller: Teenage Helpline
Data Protection Team: [email protected]

As part of the recruitment process, Teenage Helpline collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. Teenage Helpline is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

What information does Teenage Helpline collect?

Teenage Helpline collects a range of information about you. This includes:

• Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number.
• Details of your qualifications, skills, experience, and employment history.
• Information about your current level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements.
• Whether or not you have a disability for which Teenage Helpline needs to make reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process.
• Information about your entitlement to work in the UK.
• Equal opportunities monitoring information, including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.

Teenage Helpline collects this information in a variety of ways. For example, data might be contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, obtained from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment, including online video interviews and online tests.

Teenage Helpline will also collect personal data about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employers, information from employment background check providers and information from criminal records checks.

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

Why does Teenage Helpline process personal data?

Teenage Helpline needs to process personal data to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract with you or engaging in any form of employment or volunteering relationship. It also needs to process your data to enter into a contract with you.

In some cases, Teenage Helpline needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a successful applicant’s eligibility to work in the UK before employment starts.

Teenage Helpline has a legitimate interest in processing personal data during the recruitment process and for keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows Teenage Helpline to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm a candidate’s suitability for employment and decide whom to offer a job. Teenage Helpline may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

Where Teenage Helpline relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of job applicants, employees or workers and has concluded that they are not.

Teenage Helpline processes health information if it needs to make reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process for candidates who have a disability. This is to carry out its obligations and exercise specific rights in relation to employment.

Where Teenage Helpline processes other special categories of data, such as information about ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health, religion or belief, age, gender or marital status, this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring with the explicit consent of job applicants, which can be withdrawn at any time by contacting [email protected].

For some roles, Teenage Helpline is obliged to seek information about criminal convictions and offences. Where the organisation seeks this information, it does so because it is necessary for it to comply with a regulatory requirement to establish whether or not an individual has committed an unlawful act or been involved in dishonesty or other improper conduct.

If your application is unsuccessful, Teenage Helpline will keep your personal data on file in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited. Teenage Helpline will ask for your consent before it keeps your data for this purpose, and you are free to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting [email protected].

Who has access to data?

Your information will be shared internally for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the People and Recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area with a vacancy and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

Your data will be transferred outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) for storage purposes. Data is transferred outside of the EEA on the basis that a third-party recruitment site is used for recruitment, which is hosted through Amazon Web Services. We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

GetOfferd is the third party who facilitates the recruitment process for Teenage Helpline. You can view their privacy policy here.

How does Teenage Helpline protect data?

Teenage Helpline takes the security of your data seriously. It has internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused, or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.

For how long does Teenage Helpline keep data?

If your application for employment is unsuccessful, Teenage Helpline will hold your data on file for 3 months after the end of the relevant recruitment process. If you agree to allow Teenage Helpline to keep your personal data on file, Teenage Helpline will hold your data on file for the further 5 years for consideration for future employment opportunities. At the end of that period, or once you withdraw your consent, your data is deleted or destroyed.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided in the Data Protection Policy and Data Retention Guidelines.

Your rights

As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:

• Access and obtain a copy of your data on request.
• Require Teenage Helpline to change incorrect or incomplete data.
• Require Teenage Helpline to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing.
• Object to the processing of your data where Teenage Helpline is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing.
• Ask Teenage Helpline to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override Teenage Helpline’s legitimate grounds for processing data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact Barney Harrison, Data Protection Officer ([email protected]). You can make a subject access request by contacting the Data Protection Office at the email above.

If you believe that Teenage Helpline has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.

What if you do not provide personal data?

You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to Teenage Helpline during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, Teenage Helpline may not be able to process your application properly or at all. If your application is successful, it will be a condition of any job offer that you provide evidence of your right to work in the UK and satisfactory references.

You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.

Automated decision-making

Some of Teenage Helpline’s recruitment processes are based solely on automated decision-making. When submitting an application, all applicants will be subject to a series of screening questions relating directly to the role being advertised. If applicants are unable to satisfactorily respond to the initial screening questions, their application will be rejected and all personal data will be removed from the recruitment system.