Privacy and Cookies
Privacy and Cookies Policy
HSQ Recruitment is a national specialist recruitment organisation which focuses on Civil Engineering, Rail, Water and Highways trading under the name HSQ Recruitment LLP. We provide permanent and temporary recruitment services to clients looking to recruit talent for their businesses.
Please note that links from our website may take you to external websites not covered by this policy. We recommend that you check their privacy policies yourself before submitting any personal information. We will not be responsible for the content, function or information collection policies of these external websites.
Introduction:
We are committed to protecting any data that we collect concerning you. By using our services you agree to the use of the data that we collect in accordance with this Privacy & Cookies Policy.
We are committed to protecting your privacy.
We collect the minimum amount of information about you that is commensurate with providing you with a satisfactory service. This policy indicates the type of processes that may result in data being collected about you. Your use of this website gives us the right to collect that information.
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to and 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.
Nothing in this privacy policy is intended to confer any employment rights on you. In particular, this policy does not create any obligation HSQ Recruitment to offer you any assignments.
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.
Information Collected:
Information you provide to us
We may receive personal information about you whenever you contact us. For example, by doing the following:
Completing our Contact Us Form
Applying for a job, uploading your CV and uploading a vacancy
Using and browsing our website
Telephoning, texting, writing by post or emailing us
We may collect any or all of the information that you give us depending on the type of transaction you enter into, including:
Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
Date of birth.
Marital status.
Employment history, qualifications and education.
Next of kin and emergency contact information.
The information you provide to us in your curriculum vitae and any covering letter
Any information you provide to us as part of the registration process
A copy of your passport or other right to work information.
Recordings of telephone calls which you have with HS2Recruitment.com.
Additional information relevant to your use of our site and services, such as your marketing preferences, survey responses and feedback.
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.
Wages and payment details (only applicable to temporary or contract workers).
Bank account details, payroll records and tax details
National Insurance number.
Wages, annual leave, and pension information.
This information ensures that we can pay you for the work you carry out for our clients; administer your pension; deduct any necessary tax and national insurance contributions; keep records of your annual leave entitlement; complete our company accounts and carry out audits.
Temporary work records (only applicable to temporary or contract workers)
The date you register with HSQ Recruitment
The dates and locations of any assignments which you undertake with our clients.
Assignment records (including job titles, work carried out on assignment, and training records).
Timesheets and information about working hours and holidays.
Information and documents about lateness and absences.
Details of any disciplinary action taken against you.
We use this information to administer (and keep records of) our contract with you to provide work-finding services; to pay you; for business management and planning; to make decisions about your continued engagement and to comply with our legal obligations.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to enter into a contract to provide work finding services to you as such contracts form the basis of our business. In the event that we enter into a contract with you, we also use the above information to comply with our legal obligations and to perform that contract by seeking to find you work with one of our clients.
The reason we process the above information is so that we can perform our contract with you and comply with our legal obligations. It is also in our legitimate interests to ensure that our financial information, including your wages information, is audited and kept under review to enable us to run the business.
Any other information provided to us via the website or during other communications and contacts. Other information that may be needed from time to time to process a request may also be collected as indicated on the website.
We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” 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 we collect about you on our website
We collect information using Cookies and other similar technologies to help distinguish you from other users of our website. These can streamline your online experience by saving you from re-inputting some information and also allow us to make improvements to our website. For more information about how and why we use Cookies please take a look through this Privacy and Cookie Policy.
When you visit our website we may collect the following information:
Which pages you view and which links you follow
Your IP address and general location
Details of the hardware and software that you are using to access the site
Any passwords that you use on our website
Our website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
How is your personal information collected?
We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
You, the candidate.
Referees
Other employment agencies
Publicly available information, from sources such as Companies House, the
Electoral Roll, County Court Judgements and repossessions this may include details about your home, household, vehicles, financial situation and debts
Information you have shared publicly, including on social media
Information from third party databases or data suppliers, such as commercial property sites, auction sites and credit reference agencies, including details about your home, belongings and creditworthiness
This list is not exhaustive and, in specific instances, we may need to collect additional data for the purposes set out in this Policy.
Information we receive about you from other sources
Sometimes you will have given your consent for other websites, services or third parties to provide information to us.
This could include information we receive about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide, in which case we will have informed you when we collected that data if we intend to share those data internally and combine it with data collected on this site. We will also have told you for what purpose we will share and combine your data.
It could also include information from third parties that we work with to provide our products and services, such as payment processors, delivery companies, technical support companies and advertising companies. Whenever we receive information about you from these third parties, we will let you know what information we have received and how and why we intend to use it.
Information Use:
We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information:
Primarily to process the task for which you visited the website.
Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
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.
To deal with any complaints you may have.
To contact you about any changes that we make to our products or services.
To administer our website, including troubleshooting problems, analysing
Statistics, conducting research and tests and keeping the site secure.
To review and improve our services and develop new ones
To review and improve the performance of our systems, processes and staff (including training).
To improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
For candidates, to communicate with you in relation to potentially suitable assignments, to check that you are legally entitled to work in the UK and to carry out equal opportunities monitoring.
Data collected in the UK is held in accordance with the Data Protection Act. All reasonable precautions are taken to prevent unauthorised access to this information. This safeguard may require you to provide additional forms of identity should you wish to obtain information about your account details.
The reason we process the above information is so that we can perform our contract with you to provide work-finding services, and to comply with our legal obligations. It is also in our legitimate interest as a responsible employment business to be able to contact your designated family member and/or friend in the event that there is an emergency when you are at work. It is also in your interests that we are able to inform your designated contact of any emergency. In certain circumstances it may also be necessary for us to do so in order to protect your vital interests.
We may also need this information, especially your name, to carry out the processing activities listed below:
Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for work with our clients.
Decide whether we want to enter into a contract to provide our work finding services to you.
Add your details to our database.
Search for suitable work for you.
Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
Communicate with you in relation to potentially suitable roles for you and to arrange for you to meet the client or attend an interview.
Keep records related to the provision of our work-finding services to you.
Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to enter into a contract to provide work finding services to you as such contracts form the basis of our business. In the event that we enter into a contract with you, we also use the above information to comply with our legal obligations and to perform that contract by seeking to find you work with one of our clients.
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).
Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
With your consent.
Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection
With your engagement.
Where it is needed to assess your working capacity on health grounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.
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.
Contacting you:
We want to stay in touch with you! Sometimes we may need to use the information that we have about you in order to respond to your questions or let you know about important changes.
We will only use your information in this respect where it is necessary so that we can:
Verify your identity
We may use your information where it is necessary for us to do so in order to meet our legal obligations or to detect and prevent fraud, money-laundering and other crimes. Protecting you and others from harm
We may use your information where it is necessary to protect your interests, or the interests of others. This may include in the event of criminality such as identity theft, piracy or fraud.
Interact and respond to any communications you send us, including where you use our Contact Us Form, and any social media posts that you tag us in
Let you know about any important changes to our business or policies
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 references 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
We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:
We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the process of providing work-finding services to you.
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.
Information about criminal convictions
We may process information about criminal convictions where the role available requires us to do so. We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy. 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 interest) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.
Automated decision-making
You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.
Data sharing
Our clients for the purposes of finding you work.
Our IT service provider and CRM provider, to the extent that they need to access our system to carry out work on our IT, CRM or communications systems.
Regulators and other authorities or to otherwise comply with the law and for the prevention or detection of crime, including exchanging information with other companies or organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.
Training providers and professional trade bodies.
Proportionately to prospective parties as part of a merger, business or asset sale.
Our factoring company, payroll provider, accountant, pension providers, HR consultancy services and, if relevant, umbrella companies for the purposes of
All our clients and third party providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect any of your personal information which we share with them. We do not allow our third party 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.
We may use third party service providers to process some information who may be based or may have sub-processors, resources or data processing facilities outside the European Economic Area (for example we use a CRM system to provide client relationship management services who are based/use servers/have sub-processors in the US. Any such transfers shall be affected in accordance with our obligations under data protection legislation with appropriate safeguards including where there are adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses approved by the European Commission or the ICO. For example, for most companies we will enter a data processing agreement incorporating the model contract clauses. Further, in the U.S.A. companies may be certified under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and Swiss U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, which ensures that your data will be processed and protected in compliance with EU and UK law and regulations. If you require further information about any protective measures in relation to such arrangements, please contact us on the details given above.
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 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 separately in our retention tables. 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 and applicable laws and regulations.
If you apply for a role with one of our clients but you are unsuccessful, we may retain your details on file for 3 years in case an alternative role becomes available for which you may be suitable. After 3 years if no alternative role has become available then we will securely destroy your data.
Your rights in connection with personal information
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data 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.
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
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact info@hsqrecruitment.com in writing.
Your duty to inform us of changes
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes.
No fee usually required
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.
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 information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Right to withdraw consent
In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact info@hsqrecruitment.com. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.
Use of Cookies:
What are cookies?
Cookies are information files stored on your computer, tablet or smartphone that help websites remember who you are and information about your visit. Cookies can help to display the information on a website in a way that matches your interests. Most websites use cookies.
What cookies are used on this website?
The cookies used on this website can be grouped into the following categories:
Essential – Some of the cookies on our website are essential for us to be able to provide you with a service you have requested. An example of this would be a cookie used to enable you to log into your account on the website or which allows communication between your browser and the website.
Google Analytics – These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.
Social Sharing – We use cookies to allow you to share content directly on the social networking/sharing sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Examples would be if you wanted to “like” or “tweet” about a business or product advertised on our website.
How can I reject or opt out of receiving cookies?
If you want to reject cookies we use from this website you will need to delete the cookies from your browser. Most browsers also allow you to prevent all or some cookies being stored on your machine in the future. For more information on how to delete or disable cookies from your browser please use the “help” function within your browser or alternatively visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Please be aware that disabling cookies may impact the functionality of this website.
Changes to this Policy:
Any changes to our Privacy & Cookies Policy will be placed here and will supersede this version of our Policy. We will take reasonable steps to draw your attention to any changes in our Policy. However, to be on the safe side, we suggest that you read this document each time you use the website to ensure that it still meets with your approval.
Contacting Us:
If you have any questions about our Privacy & Cookies Policy, or if you want to know what information we have collected about you, please email us at info@hsqrecruitment.com. You can also correct any factual errors in that information or require us to remove your details from any list under our control.
If you wish to make a complaint about our collection or use of your personal data, please use the Contact Us Form in the first instance so that we may seek to resolve your complaint.
You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the statutory body which oversees data protection law in the UK. Please visit the ICO website if you wish to lodge a complaint with the ICO.
