PRIVACY NOTICE FOR INTERNSHIP APPLICANTS

MAY 2020

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT?  

We are The Academy of Medical Sciences (Registered Charity No. 1185329 Incorporated by Royal Charter. Registration No. RC000905, Register Office: 41 Portland Place).

We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. We want you to be confident that your information will be properly protected whilst in our possession.

This privacy notice describes how we, and carefully selected parties we work with, will collect and use personal information about you.

We are a data “controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

You are being sent a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us as an intern. 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. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR).

If you have any questions about our use of your personal information, or you wish to exercise one of your rights under data protection legislation, please contact us. A summary of your rights is detailed in this notice. 

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU  

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 application form.

•     The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth, gender and qualifications.

•     Any information you provide to us during an interview.

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 you may choose to disclose about your health, including any medical condition.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?  

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

•     You, the candidate.

•     Your PhD supervisor and programme director, from whom we collect the following categories of data: confirmation of academic stage, funding arrangements and availability for the internship.

•     Your PhD funding organisation, with whom we may confirm the details above.

HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU  

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 recruitment processes.

•     Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to a role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role. We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into an internship agreement with you.

Having received your CV and your application form, 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 is strong enough 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.

If we decide to offer you the role, we will carry out a right to work check before confirming your internship.

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 details of your academic stage and funding arrangement), we will not be able to process your application successfully. For example, if you fail to provide us with evidence that your PhD supervisor and programme director support your application, we will not be able to take your application further.

Also, any offer made to you may be conditional upon you providing evidence of your identity and your right of work in the UK. This is a legal requirement. If you fail to provide this information we may not be able to offer you an internship.

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 recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during an interview. We have a legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments in certain circumstances.

•     We may ask you for information regarding your health to establish whether you will be able to carry out a function that is intrinsic to the work concerned, pursuant to the Equality Act 2010.

•     We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS  

We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions.

AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING  

We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

DATA SHARING  

Why might you share my personal information with third parties?

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group 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 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 six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to a role. We retain your personal information for that 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 our data retention policy and applicable laws and regulations.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will seek your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION  

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 Jemini Prajapati, HR Manager in writing.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT  

When you applied for a role with us, you consented 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, if you no longer wish for us to involve you in the recruitment process. To withdraw your consent, please contact Jemini Prajapati, HR Manager. 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.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Jemini Prajapati, HR Manager.

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.