Privacy Notice
HOST Technology Group Limited (‘the Company’ or ‘HOST’)
Address: 7 Bell Yard, London, WC2A 2JR
Company no.: 11726499
Telephone: +44 203 745 0496
Email: privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk
HOST Technology Group is a global search and strategic recruitment firm, specialising in the provision of technology professionals across multiple sectors, offering services in Executive, Permanent, Retained and Contract recruitment to its clients and work seekers.
HOST must process personal data (including sensitive personal data) so that it can provide these services – in doing so, HOST acts as a data controller.
You may give your personal details to HOST directly, such as on an application or registration form or via our website, or we may collect them from another source such as a jobs board. HOST must have a legal basis for processing your personal data. For the purposes of providing you with work-finding services and/or information relating to roles relevant to you we will only use your personal data in accordance with this privacy statement. At all times we will comply with current data protection laws.
1. Collection and use of personal data
a. Purpose of processing and legal basis
HOST will collect your personal data (which may include sensitive personal data) and will process your personal data for the purposes of providing you with work-finding services. This includes for example, contacting you about job opportunities, assessing your suitability for those opportunities, updating our databases, putting you forward for job opportunities, arranging payments to you and developing and managing our services and relationship with you and our clients.
If you have opted-in, subscribed or in some cases if we have had a previous commercial relationship with you, we may also send you marketing information and news via email or text. You can opt-out from receiving these at any time by writing “unsubscribe” when you receive these communications from us.
In some cases we may be required to use your data for the purpose of investigating, reporting and detecting crime and also to comply with laws that apply to us. We may also use your information during the course of internal audits to demonstrate our compliance with certain industry standards.
We must have a legal basis to process your personal data. Our legal basis for processing personal data is our legitimate business interests, although we will also rely on Contract, Legal and Consent for certain specific uses of personal data.
We will rely on Contract as the legal basis if we are negotiating or have entered into a placement agreement with you or your organisation or any other contract to provide services to you or receive services from you or your organisation.
Where we are legally obliged to hold information, we will apply the Legal basis for doing so.
In some cases, where legally required and where obtaining sensitive personal data, we will obtain express consent from you.
b. Legitimate interest
This is where HOST has a legitimate reason to process your data provided it is reasonable and does not go against what you would reasonably expect from us. Where HOST has relied on a legitimate interest to process your personal data our legitimate interests are as follows:
- Retaining records of our dealings and transactions and the use of such records for the purposes of:
- establishing compliance with contractual obligations with clients or suppliers
- addressing any query or dispute that may arise including establishing, exercising, or defending any legal claims
- protecting our reputation
- maintaining a backup of our system for the purpose of being able to restore the system to a prior point in time in the event of a system failure or security breach
- evaluating quality and compliance, including compliance with this Privacy Notice
- determining staff training and system requirements
- Collecting and using your personal data to:
- manage our database and keep records up to date
- assess your suitability and to contact you regarding potential temporary or permanent job opportunities
- collate market intelligence or trends including providing analysis to potential or actual clients
- source potential opportunities or roles as part of our recruitment services from a recruitment platform such as LinkedIn, Monster, Indeed, CV Library and Jobsite
- personalise your experience and our offering, whether via our website or otherwise
- contact you with information about similar products or services you have used from us recently
- collect information about you from a referral from friends, colleagues, or relevant contacts
- collect information from recruitment software. Where we collect information through publicly available sources as set out above, we may do this with the aid of programs such as Lusha. If you have any questions or queries you can contact support@lusha.co.uk
This means that for our commercial viability and to pursue these legitimate interests we may continue to process your personal data for as long as we consider reasonably necessary for these purposes.
c. Statutory/contractual requirement
We must comply with various statutory provisions when providing our recruitment services (such as Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003) which necessitate the processing of personal data. These provisions include:
- Verifying your identity
- Assessing your suitability for a role
- Establishing your right to work
- Establishing your fitness to work
- Paying you and providing information to the HMRC
- Maintaining records for specific periods in line with legal requirements
Where we engage an individual to work for us (whether directly or supplied to a client), there are other statutory obligations that we must comply with including but not limited to payroll, taxation, social security and HMRC reporting requirements. We are also required to comply with statutory and regulatory obligations relating to general business, for example fraud or crime prevention.
d. Recipients of data
HOST will process your personal data and/or sensitive personal data with the following recipients:
- Individuals, hirers and other third parties, necessary for the provision of our recruitment services
- Former or prospective new employers that we obtain or provide references to
- Any regulatory authority or statutory body following a request for information or any legal obligation which applies to us
- Public information sources and third party organisations that we may use to carry out suitability checks on work seekers e.g. Companies House and the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
- Parties who process data on our behalf, including but limited to:
- IT support
- CRM system providers
- Payroll systems and service providers
- Umbrella companies
- Legal and professional advisers
- Insurers
2. Overseas Transfers
HOST will not transfer the information you provide to us to countries outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) for the purposes of providing you with work-finding services. The EEA comprises the EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
For avoidance of doubt, where data may be held on servers outside of the EEA e.g. CRM system US server, that data shall not be accessed or manipulated in that country.
3. Data retention
HOST will retain your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purpose we collect it. Different laws may also require us to keep different data for different periods of time. For example, the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, require us to keep work-seeker records for at least one year from (a) the date of their creation or (b) after the date on which we last provide you with work-finding services.
We must also keep your payroll records, holiday pay, sick pay and pensions auto-enrolment records for as long as is legally required by HMRC and associated national minimum wage, social security and tax legislation. This is currently 3 to 6 years.
If at any stage you feel that we should not retain your data then please inform us of this by emailing privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk
4. Your rights
You have a number of rights available to you such as the right to know what personal data we hold about you, the right to ask us to update and correct any out-of-date or incorrect personal data and the right to opt out of any marketing communications.
These rights being:
- The right to be informed
- The right to access
- The right to rectification
- The right to erasure
- The right to data portability
- The right to restrict processing
- The right to object processing
Further information and advice about your rights can be obtained from the relevant data protection regulator in your country.
There may be circumstances where HOST will still need to process your data for legal or official reasons. We will inform you if this is the case. Where this is the case, we will restrict the data to only what is necessary for the purpose of meeting those specific reasons.
If you believe that any of your data that HOST processes is incorrect or incomplete, please contact us using privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk and we will take reasonable steps to check its accuracy and correct it where necessary.
5. Automated decision-making
We may use software to review personal data recorded on our database. The software may determine individual suitability for a specific role via targeted questions relating to the role, and or may identify and select individual personal information according to the stored characteristics. For example, the software may enable us to quickly identify individuals from our database who have specific skills and exclude individuals whose characteristics do not match the specific requirements.
6. Cookies
This website is about HOST Technology Group, a technology recruitment agency that provides permanent, retained and contract staff to companies worldwide. The website itself will go into detail about what we do, where you can contact us and more. It does not collect any personal data or information to which you can be identified but it does use a couple of cookies to allow the website to perform in the way it does.
This website is GDPR compliant in the very best way and most importantly will not take information from you, unless you have chosen to tell us something about yourself by entering the details on to the site. Those details will only be used to communicate with you and no other person unless you have expressed permission for us to do so. With the details provided to us we will become your Data Controller.
If at any time you have any questions or concerns, please contact us through privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk
7. Log Files
We use IP addresses to analyse trends, administer the site, track users’ movements, and to gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.
8. Links to external websites
HOST’s website (www.hosttechnologygroup.co.uk) may contain links to other external websites. Please be aware that HOST is not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. When you leave our site we encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by HOST and its website.
9. Sale of business
If HOST’s business is sold or integrated with another business your details may be disclosed to our advisers and any prospective purchasers and their advisers and will be passed on to the new owners of the business.
10. Data Security
HOST takes every precaution to protect our users’ information and we use security measures in relation to the personal data processed e.g. firewalls, browser certification technology, encryption, limited access, use of passwords as appropriate.
Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, consultants, our accounts clerk or a marketing assistant) are granted access to your information.
HOST uses all reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal information. However, you should be aware that the use of email/the Internet is not entirely secure and for this reason HOST cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal information which is transferred from you or to you via email/the Internet.
If you share a device with others we recommend that you do not select the “remember my details” function when that option is offered.
If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can email privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk
11. Changes to this privacy statement
We will update this privacy statement from time to time. We will post any changes on the statement with revision dates.
12. Complaints or queries
If you wish to complain about this privacy notice or any of the procedures set out in it please contact: privacy@hosttechnologygroup.co.uk