Privacy notice for candidates

What is the purpose of this document?

Al Rayan Bank PLC is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during the application process to work with us, in accordance with the prevailing data protection legislation.

It relates to all candidates – whether you are applying to work with us as an employee, worker or contractor.

Al Rayan Bank PLC is a "data controller". 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 notice 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. 

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.

3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

4. Accurate and kept up to date.

5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

6. Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

There are "special categories" of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

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.
• The information you have provided via our online portal for applications.
• Any information you provide to us during the selection and offer process
• We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:
  • Information about your race or ethnicity and religious beliefs, i
  • Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
  • Information about criminal convictions and offences.

  How is your personal information collected?

  • We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:
    • You, the candidate.
    • The recruitment agency, who may pass us data you have given them.
    • A background check provider such as CIFAS, in respect of any reported involvement with fraud.
    • A credit reference agency such as Equifax, in respect of credit history data.
    • Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions.
    • Your named referees in respect of your previous employment details, performance and attendance.

  How we will use information about you

  We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

  1. Where we need to perform a contract we have entered into with you.
  
  2. Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
  
  3. 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.

  We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

  1. Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests).
  
  2. Where it is needed in the public interest.

  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 decide whether to appoint you to the role or work for which you have applied since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role or to carry out that work.

  We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment or a contract for services with you.

  Having received your CV and covering letter, your application form, and/or your online application, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be shortlisted for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application meets the criteria to invite you for an interview. If we decide to call you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role or work. If we decide to offer you the role or work, we may then:

  • take up references;
  • carry out a criminal record check;
  • carry out a credit check and
  • carry out a CIFAS fraud and immigration status check (www.cifas.org.uk) in accordance with our statutory or regulatory obligations

  Find out more about what information we collect, who we share it with, why we collect it and how we will safeguard it.

  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

  "Special categories" of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of 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 recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview.
  • We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting. 

  Information about criminal convictions

  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.

  We envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.

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

  We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

  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 may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party service providers.

  We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

  We may transfer your personal information to our Head Office in Qatar if the nature (such as the seniority) of the role for which you are applying requires your application to be considered by relevant staff there. If we do, we ensure that your personal information is kept secure and processed to the same standards as we must uphold.

  Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

  We will only share your personal information with the third parties referred to above (recruitment agency, credit reference agency, DBS check provider, CIFAS) for the purposes of processing your application. All our third-party service providers 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.

  Data security

  We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. 

  Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

  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

  How long will you use my information for?

  We will retain your personal information for a period of 6 months after we have communicated to you our decision if you have been unsuccessful in your application. We retain your personal information for that period on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that. We will also retain your personal information for this 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.

Your rights

Under the prevailing data protection legislation, you have a number of rights:

• 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. This is known as Data Portabilility.

If you want to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Al Rayan Bank Human Resources Team in writing.

Fees

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

When you apply for a role or work, you provide consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact Al Rayan Bank Human Resources Team who will also inform the Data Protection Officer. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our retention policy, we will dispose of your personal data securely.

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.

Data Protection Officer

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer – DataProtection@alrayanbank.co.uk. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

Effective from: 25/05/2018, Updated 21/01/2022