The British Council complies with the UK Data Protection Act 2018 incorporating the UK GDPR as retained version of the General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679, and data protection laws in other countries that meet internationally accepted standards.
This privacy notice is intended for all candidates, internal and external, applying for a role at the British Council. It provides details of how we collect and use your personal information.
Why we collect your personal information
During the recruitment process, we collect your personal information on the basis that you may be offered a contract of employment. We need your personal information to determine whether you can be appointed successfully into a role, following a competitive recruitment and interview process.
With your application, we ask you to provide information such as your contact details, previous working experience, dates of employment, qualifications, or eligibility to work in the country the role is advertised in. The legal basis we rely on for processing your information for this purpose is that it is necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract. We will also ask if you require any reasonable adjustments we may have to provide, under our legal duty to guarantee a fair process.
We will also ask whether you have a disability, to determine if any reasonable adjustments need to be made to guarantee your participation in an interview. We will process this special category data with your consent, by freely providing such information.
When submitting your application form, you will be asked to complete an optional equality monitoring form, which captures personal information relating to your legal sex, nationality, age group and your ethnicity and community background in the UK gender. We will process this data based on your consent.
Collection of equality related information supports the British Council to ensure its obligations are carried out in line with the good practice recommended in the Equality Act 2010 and Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act (1998) and in associated Codes of Practice. Any information you provide may be used in aggregated and anonymised reports to conduct equality data monitoring, analysis, and planning. For example, it can help us to understand where there may be gaps or where we can be doing more to widen the diversity of our employees.
The equality monitoring form will be separated from your application form, will not be seen by any member of the selection panel, and will not be used at any stage to inform decisions related to your recruitment and selection. Providing equality-related personal information is entirely voluntary. It will not affect your application in any way if you decide not to provide this information Shortlisting and Assessment.
We consider all the information gathered during the application process, except any equal opportunities information if you have provided it. We use an automated model to help us match job roles to candidates’ profiles, this is not an automated decision-making tool but an aid to recruiters and hiring managers and the shortlisting decision is always taken by the human recruiters. The model caters for non-discrimination features and does not use protected characteristics such as gender, age, or ethnicity.
Pre-employment screening
Should you be offered a conditional offer of employment with the British Council, we will carry out pre-employment screening and background security checks to determine your eligibility for employment, in line with our policies and country-specific regulations. Checks will be conducted by a third-party screening vendor.
Details of the checks and how your personal data will be processed for this specific purpose will be provided at the point when a conditional offer of employment has been made.
Unsuccessful candidates
If you are unsuccessful after our assessment of your suitability for the role and are an external candidate, we may ask if you would like us to keep your details in our talent pool. If you agree, we will proactively contact you should any further suitable vacancies arise. If you do not agree, please refer to the Retention section below.
Disclosure of your personal information
The British Council will treat your information as confidential and only share what is required with the following third parties providing elements of our recruitment operation for us. These service providers follow our instructions as Processors, under contract.
We may disclose your information to trusted third parties that the British Council works with, including but not limited to careers portal provider to receive job applications and manage the recruitment process, pre-employment check providers and test providers. We may also share your information with law enforcement agencies, government bodies, regulatory organisations, or other public authorities if we have to, by a legal obligation. If your application is successful, your contractual and payroll data will be handled locally in the country where you will be offered a British Council job.
Some of this information will be fully anonymised so it is no longer identifiable, before it is used by the careers portal provider and model developer Eightfold as a Controller, for the purpose of its model training. Your data will be anonymised by Eightfold/the developer under their legitimate interest to build up/develop a viable product that we use to improve our talent acquisition and management capacity by helping us make better talent decisions and reduce bias.
International transfers of personal information
We may need to transfer your personal information to third parties located in countries outside of the country where you have applied, including outside the European Economic Area or the UK, for the above purposes. We adequately protect your information as required by applicable law, for example by using standard contractual agreements approved by relevant authorities and by requiring the use of appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of personal data in these circumstances.
Your rights
You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold on you, and the right to ask us to correct any inaccuracies in that information. If you have concerns about how we have used your personal information, you also have the right to complain to a privacy regulator. For detailed information, please refer to the privacy section of our website: www.britishcouncil.org/privacy, or contact your local British Council office.
Data retention
If you are an external candidate and are unsuccessful in the application process, we will permanently and securely delete your personal information two years after the recruitment decision has been made. You can request the removal of your personal data at any time prior to this by informing us in writing. If successful, your application will become part of your HR record.
If you are an internal candidate, we will keep your application in your HR record. HR records are kept in line with the HR Records Retention Schedule.