Candidate Privacy Notice

Introduction

When you trust us with your CV, you are trusting us with your career. This notice exists so you know exactly how that trust is honoured.

Recruitment involves more personal information than most business relationships: your work history, your salary, your ambitions, sometimes the fact that you are looking at all. We handle that information carefully, transparently and in line with UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This notice explains the specifics for candidates: what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with and when, how long we keep it, and the rights and control you have throughout. If anything is unclear, ask us, plain answers are part of how we work.

Who We Are

Hackles & Co provides Recruitment & Staffing Support as one of its core services, helping businesses find the right people and helping candidates find the right roles. For the purposes of UK data protection law, Hackles & Co is the controller of the candidate information described in this notice.

Who This Notice Applies To

This notice applies to anyone whose information we handle in connection with recruitment:

• Job applicants applying for a specific role we are recruiting for
• Candidates we are actively representing or discussing roles with
• Prospective candidates we have approached, or who have expressed early interest
• Individuals registering with Hackles & Co through our website, by email or in person

If you are a client, supplier or website visitor rather than a candidate, our main Privacy Policy is the document for you.

Information We Collect

We collect what recruitment genuinely needs, and not more. Depending on how far a process goes, this typically includes:

• Contact details: name, phone, email, address
• Your CV and supporting documents
• Work history and current position
• Qualifications and training
• Salary expectations and notice period
• References, where you provide referees
• Interview notes and feedback
• Right-to-work information, where required
• Our communications with you
• Your preferences: locations, sectors, types of role

If you choose to tell us something sensitive, for example a health matter relevant to a role, we record it only where genuinely needed, treat it with extra care, and never pass it on without discussing it with you first.

How We Collect Information

Almost everything we hold about you comes from you. Information reaches us:

• Directly from you, when you register or apply
• Through forms on our website
• By email, when you send us your CV
• In telephone conversations
• In meetings and interviews
• Through referrals, where someone recommends you to us
• Via LinkedIn or professional networking contact, where appropriate

Where someone refers you to us, or we approach you through a professional network, we tell you who we are and why we are in touch at the first contact, and this notice applies from that point.

Why We Use Candidate Information

We use your information for recruitment, and for the things the law requires of a recruitment business. Specifically:

• Assessing suitability for roles, matching your experience, preferences and circumstances against opportunities honestly.
• Discussing opportunities with you, so you hear about roles that genuinely fit, not everything with a job title.
• Arranging interviews, coordinating times, sharing details both ways, and passing on feedback promptly.
• Managing recruitment processes, keeping track of where you are in each process so nothing stalls or gets lost.
• Confirming placements, handling offers, start dates and the paperwork around a successful placement.
• Maintaining recruitment records, an accurate history of submissions, feedback and outcomes.
• Meeting legal obligations, such as right-to-work checks and record-keeping required of recruitment businesses.

We do not sell candidate information, and we do not use it for marketing unrelated to finding you work.

Candidate Consent

In practice, this means we tell you about the role and the employer, you decide whether you want to be put forward, and only then does anything leave our hands. If we want to discuss you anonymously with a client before that point, nothing identifying is shared.

Your consent is not a one-off signature buried in a form: it is per role, ongoing, and yours to withdraw at any time, as Section 10 explains.

Sharing Candidate Information

Recruitment only works if some information is shared, but sharing is always limited to what is necessary, and always within these boundaries:

Recruitment clients and prospective employers

With your permission for the specific role, as Section 07 sets out. They receive what they need to assess you for that role, and they are expected to handle it in line with their own data protection obligations.

Service providers

The systems we run on, such as secure storage and email, process information on our behalf under appropriate protections.

Professional advisers

Our accountants, solicitors or insurers, only where genuinely required for the proper running of the business.

Regulators and authorities

Where the law requires it, for example to HMRC, a regulator or a court.

Nobody else. Your information is not passed to other recruiters, list builders or marketers.

Candidate Rights

UK data protection law gives you rights over your information, and we make them easy to use:

Access

Ask for a copy of everything we hold about you, including interview notes.

Correction

Have anything inaccurate or out of date corrected, just tell us.

Deletion

Ask us to delete your information where there is no good reason for us to keep it.

Restriction

Ask us to pause using your information in certain situations, for example while a correction is checked.

Objection

Object to processing based on legitimate interests; we stop unless there is a compelling reason not to.

Portability

Receive the information you gave us in a usable format, or have it sent to another organisation where the law provides for it.

Complaints

Raise a concern with us at any time, and with the Information Commissioner's Office, as Section 14 explains.

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 15. There is no charge for reasonable requests, we aim to respond within one month, and we may first confirm your identity, which protects you.

Right to Withdraw Consent

You can withdraw your consent at any time, for a single role or for everything, and it takes one message.

Contact us by phone or email and tell us what you want: to be withdrawn from a specific role, to stop being put forward for new roles, or to be removed from our records entirely. There is no form to fill in, no notice period and no awkward conversation.

Here is what happens next. We stop submitting you immediately. If you have asked to be removed, your details are deleted from our active candidate records. Where a process is already underway, we tell the employer you have withdrawn, without drama and without needing a reason. The only information we keep is what the law requires us to keep, for example records connected to a completed placement, and that is retained only for the periods in Section 11.

Withdrawing consent has no penalty and changes nothing about how we treat you. People's circumstances change, and you are welcome back whenever the time is right.

Data Retention

We keep candidate information only as long as it is genuinely useful for finding you work, or as long as the law requires. As a guide:

These are typical periods rather than fixed promises: actual retention may vary where legal or regulatory requirements apply. When information is no longer needed, it is deleted or securely destroyed.

Data Security

Candidate information is held in secure systems with access restricted to the people who need it for recruitment work. Everyone at Hackles & Co treats candidate information as confidential, including the fact that you are looking, and we take reasonable, proportionate security measures appropriate to a business of our size, reviewing them as we grow. We will not pretend any organisation can promise perfect security, but we can promise sensible precautions, and openness with you and the Information Commissioner's Office if something ever goes wrong where the law requires it.

Automated Decision Making

Hackles & Co does not make recruitment decisions solely through automated systems. Every assessment of your suitability, every submission and every shortlisting decision involves a human being who has actually read your information. Software helps us stay organised; it does not decide your future.

Complaints

If you have a concern about how your information has been handled, tell us first: contact us using the details in Section 15 and we will look into it properly and respond clearly. Concerns from candidates are taken as seriously as concerns from clients, without exception.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, at any time. The ICO can be contacted through its website at ico.org.uk or by phone on 0303 123 1113. We would value the chance to put things right first, but that choice is always yours.

Contact Us

For anything in this notice, your rights, your records, your consent, or a question we have not answered:

Relationship to the Main Privacy Policy

This notice goes deeper on recruitment, but it does not stand alone. It should be read alongside the main Hackles & Co Privacy Policy, which covers how we handle personal information across the whole business, including the lawful bases we rely on, cookies on our website and our broader data practices. Where both documents cover the same ground, they are written to agree with each other; if you ever spot a difference, tell us and we will fix it.

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