Privacy Policy

At Burns Sheehan, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy explains how we use any data we collect from you and how you can stay on top of it.

  1. Data Collection

We collect personal data to give you a better service. As a recruitment firm, we need to gather personal data to deliver the best, most relevant service possible. We collect data from:

  • Prospective and placed candidates for permanent and contract roles
  • Prospective and live client contacts
  • Supplier contacts to support our services
  • Employees, consultants, and temporary workers
  • Event attendees
  • Users who have opted in by downloading content via our website or subscribing to newsletters such as Talent Crunch

We hold a database of personal information for both prospective and current candidates and clients, including historical information as well as current resourcing requirements. This enables us to support candidates’ career aspirations and clients’ resourcing needs (both in the short and long term) while helping us maintain, expand, and develop our business. We store this data on our two CRMs – Bullhorn and HubSpot.

 

  1. Use of Your Information

As well as using it to deliver an optimum service, we use your personal data to:

  • Let you know about changes to our service
  • Improve our internal operations (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical analysis, and surveys)
  • Optimise our website to ensure content is presented in the best way for you
  • Keep our website safe and secure
  • Measure the effectiveness of advertising we deliver
  • Make suggestions and recommendations about services that may be relevant to you

 

  1. Data Collection Methods

We collect information about you when you fill in any form on our website, or when you correspond with us by phone, email, in person, or online. This includes information provided when you:

  • Register to use our website
  • Enter our database
  • Apply for a job/upload your CV
  • Subscribe to our services
  • Speak with us on the phone (we record all phone calls using Cloudcall software)
  • Register and attend our events
  • Participate in our discussion boards or other social media via our website
  • Enter a competition, promotion, or survey
  • Report an issue with our website
  • Subscribe to our Talent Crunch newsletter
  • Complete a form on our website – ‘Talk to us’, downloading content, completing an enquiry

 

  1. Website Data Collection

Every time you visit our website, we automatically collect the following information:

  • Technical information, including the IP address used to connect your computer to the internet
  • Your login information, if applicable
  • Browser type and version
  • Operating system and platform
  • Information about your visit, including the full URL
  • Clickstream to, through, and from our site (including date and time)
  • Content you viewed or searched for
  • Page response times
  • Download errors
  • Length of visits to certain pages
  • Page interaction information (like scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs)
  • Methods used to browse away from the page
  • Any phone number used to call one of our contact numbers

 

  1. Marketing Information

We collect personal data from you when you complete any forms on our website. Your personal data is stored in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, HubSpot and Bullhorn. We collect and use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • To provide the content that you have requested
  • To follow up on inquiries
  • To gather feedback on materials downloaded or events attended
  • To offer additional information or relevant materials
  • To send occasional relevant resources, such as updated versions of downloaded reports
  • To invite you to events on similar themes or topics to those you have previously signed up for

The data we hold is also useful for sending relevant job opportunities, market insight reports, information on our technology events, and general information about Burns Sheehan which we think might be of interest to you.

We process your personal data for marketing based on the following legal bases:

  • Consent: You provide consent by checking the checkbox when completing a form.
  • Legitimate Interests: We may send you relevant information based on your legitimate interests, ensuring that such interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.

Please contact gdpr@burnssheehan.co.uk if you feel you’ve received any material in error.

 

  1. Data from Third Parties

Because we work closely with several third parties, we may receive information from them about you for the purposes of our recruitment and support services. These include:

  • Business partners
  • Sub-contractors in technical, professional, payment, and other services
  • Advertising networks
  • Analytics providers
  • Search information providers
  • Credit reference agencies
  • Professional advisors

 

  1. Accuracy and Management of Your Data

Our website lets you manage your data and review your details. Before making an introduction, we check that we have accurate information about you. We keep in touch with you so you can let us know if your personal details change. The information you give us, or which we collect about you, may include your:

  • Name, address, private and corporate email address, and phone number
  • Financial information
  • Compliance documentation
  • References verifying your qualifications and experience and your right to work in the UK
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Photograph
  • Links to your professional profiles available in the public domain (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, business Facebook, or corporate website)

 

  1. Gaining Your Consent

If we need your consent to lawfully process your data, we’ll request this from you in person, by phone, email, or a specific online process. Responses will be recorded on our system. When consent is the lawful basis for our processing, you have the right to withdraw your consent to this particular processing at any time.

 

  1. Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us give you the best possible experience while you’re browsing, while also allowing us to improve our site. We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our website in order to make it even more relevant to your needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes, and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us give you a better website by letting us monitor which pages you find useful and which you don’t. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you other than the data you choose to share with us. You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

 

  1. Data Sharing

We share personal information with selected third parties both inside and outside the European Economic Area (EEA), including:

  • Clients, business partners, suppliers, and subcontractors: We share information with our clients so we can introduce candidates or arrange interviews and engagements. We also share information with subcontractors including email marketing specialists, event organizers, and financial service providers. Once we enter into a contract, we may share data with clients, business partners, suppliers, and subcontractors to fulfil performance and compliance obligations.
  • Advertising and advertising networks: These often require data so they can serve adverts that are relevant to you and others. We never disclose information about identifiable individuals to our advertisers, but we do provide them with aggregate information about our users. For example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have clicked on their advert on any given day. We may also use this kind of aggregated anonymous information to help advertisers reach the type of audience they want to target (for example, women in SW1). We may use the personal data we’ve collected from you to comply with our advertisers’ wishes by displaying their advertisement to that target audience.
  • Analytics and search engine providers: We provide aggregated anonymous information to analytics and search engine providers to help improve and optimize our website.
  • Reference agencies, our insurance broker, compliance partners, and other subcontractors: We share information with these parties when entering into a contract with you is conditional on assessing your suitability for a role.

We’ll only disclose your personal information to third parties in the following circumstances:

  • If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we’ll disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer.
  • If Burns Sheehan Limited or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held on clients and candidates will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data to comply with our legal obligations or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Burns Sheehan Limited, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

The lawful basis for the third-party processing will include:

  • Their own legitimate business interests in processing your personal data, in most cases to fulfil their internal resourcing needs
  • Satisfaction of their contractual obligations to us as our data processor
  • For the purpose of a contract in place or in contemplation
  • To fulfil their legal obligations

 

  1. Data Storage and Security

All information you give us is stored on our secure servers. Any payment transactions will be encrypted. Where we’ve given you (or you’ve chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you’re responsible for keeping this password confidential. Remember, it’s important not to share a password with anyone.

The data we collect from you may be transferred or stored to a third party outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to assist in our recruitment services. It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work

When you submit your personal data, it signals your agreement to this transfer, storing or processing. Naturally, we take all the steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with our privacy policy.

As you know, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we can’t guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site, and any transmission is at your own risk. Once we’ve received your information, we will of course use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.

We know that it’s our legal duty to retain accurate data. We’re also required to only retain personal data for as long as we need it for our legitimate business interests, and as long as you’re happy for us to do so. For this reason, we regularly remove data that we no longer have a legitimate business interest in maintaining. You can get a copy of our current retention policy by emailing gdpr@burnssheehan.co.uk.

In some circumstances we may archive part or all of your personal data. We may also retain it on our financial systems only, deleting all or part of it from our main Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) system.

If we receive a request to suppress or delete your data, we may pseudonymise parts of it, to ensure that we don’t re-enter (unless requested) your personal data on to our database. This pseudonymised data is created by taking identifying fields within a database and replacing them with artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms.

We segregate our data, so we keep different types of data for different time periods. The criteria we use to determine whether we should retain your personal data includes:

-The nature of the personal data

-Its perceived accuracy

-Our legal obligations

-Whether an interview or placement has been arranged

-Our recruitment expertise and knowledge of the industry by sector and job role.

 

Know your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes.
Before we collect your data, we’ll usually let you know if we intend to use it or disclose it to a third party for marketing – and if legally required, we’ll obtain consent from you first.

If you’d like to accept or prevent your data being used for marketing, you can do this by checking the relevant box on the forms we use to collect your data – or by contacting gdpr@burnssheehan.co.uk.

Sometimes you may see links on our site to and from our partner networks’, advertisers’ and affiliates’ websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies. We can’t accept responsibility or liability for these policies, so please make sure you check their individual policies before you submit personal data to them.

We operate under GDPR rules (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation). This is designed to enhance privacy rights for individuals, and provides a strict framework within which businesses like ours can legally operate. GDPR lets you

Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you
If we hold incomplete or inaccurate information, you can have it corrected.

Request erasure of your personal information
You can ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You can also get 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
If you want us to first establish the data’s accuracy, or our reason for processing it, you can ask us to suspend its processing.

Request the transfer of your personal information to another party in certain formats, if practical.

Make a complaint to a supervisory body
In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can contact them here: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/

How to access the information we hold on you

The Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR give you the right to access information held about you. We also encourage you to contact us to ensure your data is accurate and complete. To request access to your information, please contact gdpr@burnssheehan.co.uk.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted here – so please check back frequently. Where appropriate, we’ll also let you know via email.

 

Get in touch

We welcome any questions, comments and requests you may have on our privacy policy. Please contact our Data Protection Manager gdpr@burnssheehan.co.uk or write to us at:

London office:

55 King William Street, London EC4R 9AD

020 3206 1900

Manchester office:

80 Mosley St, Manchester M2 3FX

020 3206 1900

 

Last updated: 11.07.2024

For the protection legislation in force from time to time the data controller is Burns Sheehan Limited of 55 King William Street, London, EC4R 9AD.