Recruitment and Selection

This Privacy Notice refers to external recruitment and selection, where we may recruit direct or use the services of a recruitment agency.  Internal recruitment for existing employees will be covered as part of the AF&RS Employee Privacy Notice.

The categories of the information that we collect, process, hold and share include:

Name, address, telephone, email, contact details, National Insurance number, employment history, educational background and qualifications, details of your skills and experience, contact details for referees, equality and diversity (E&D) data and information about criminal records. We may also collect medical information depending on the role, which is relevant to assess your ability to carry out that role.

During a recruitment process we will collect information to verify your right to work within the UK, such as a passport or birth certificate, immigration papers for non EU citizens, and if applicable, you may be asked to provide additional information to complete a criminal records check or Police Security Vetting.

Why we collect and use this information

When you apply to work at Avon Fire & Rescue Service, we use the information provided to process your application, make an informed assessment of whether you meet the role criteria to be offered a Contract of Employment and to monitor recruitment statistics. We would also use some of the same information to process your Contract should you be successful.

Some of the information requested is necessary to meet legal or regulatory requirements. For example, if you are applying to become a firefighter you will be requested to complete a pre-physical test questionnaire and undertake a medical to meet our employer obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992. The Fire Services (Appointments and Promotion) (England and Wales) Regulations 2004 set out certain criteria that are required, such as proof of age to confirm you are over 18.

The equality monitoring form is voluntary and this information won’t affect your application. This form will be detached from your application and only used to produce and monitor anonymous equal opportunities statistics and provide data for government statistics, for example https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables

The lawful basis on which we use this information

Our lawful reason to collect and use this personal information is thatprocessing is necessary for the performance of a Contract (Article 6 (1) (b) of the General Data Protection Regulations ‘GDPR’) or compliance with a legal obligation (Article 6 (1) (c) of GDPR) as laid out above.

Our lawful reason for collecting sensitive/ special categories of personal information is for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising specific rights of the Data Controller (meaning us) or that of the data subject (meaning you) in the field of employment (Article 9 (2) (b) of GDPR), and that processing is necessary for the purposes of occupational medicine for assessing the working capacity of the employee (Article 9 (2) (h) of GDPR).  Ethnicity is collected with your explicit consent.  

Collecting this information

In addition to the information that you supply on the application form(s) we may also collect, hold and appraise information on individual candidates' performance during a recruitment and selection process. Information will be generated by you or by us. This will include information we gain from your selected referees.

Depending on the role, the recruitment and selection process may include online job specific or psychometric tests to analyseor predict your performance at work.  We normally use a professional third party to conduct these tests on our behalf.  The results will be used to inform a selection decision. Where online tests are used and a selection decision is based solely on automated outcomes you have a right to request further information from the person responsible for the testing. This allows you to gain an understanding of how the decision was reached and to challenge this decision if you are unhappy with the outcome. You will be informed where this is the case.

Storing this information

Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held for 6 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed. It will then be securely destroyed or deleted. We retain anonymised statistical information about applicants (including E&D data) to help inform our recruitment activities, but no individuals are identifiable from that data. 

Personal information about successful candidates, such as job application form and references will be held on a file relating to their employment (called a Personal Record File), which is reviewed periodically to remove any data/records that no longer meets the HR retention period. Further information can be found in the AF&RS Employee Privacy Notice and AF&RS Records Retention Schedule.

Who we share this information with and why

Where we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take up a reference or obtain a ‘disclosure’ from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), we will not do so without informing you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law.

For individuals who apply for AF&RS posts via an external Employment Agency, please refer to that Agency’s own Privacy Notice for further information about what personal data they hold and who they may share it with.

23.07.2018