Candidate Privacy Notice

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

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
• Collected for only valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited to only those purposes.
• Accurate and kept up to date.
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
• Kept securely.

3.1.   In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers and personal email addresses including all other information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae, covering letter and application form (as may be applicable).
• Other information you provide to us in support of an application and/or the application and recruitment process including information on references, relocation preferences, information regarding your previous roles.
• Information that you provide to us for and during an interview, if any.
• Evidence of your right to work in the UK and immigration status.
•  Information relating to any previous applications you may have made to the Company and/or any previous employment history with the Company.

3.2.  We may also collect, store and use:

• Diversity and equal opportunities monitoring information - this can include information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, disability and any other ‘special category’ data.
• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.

4.1.  We typically collect personal information either directly from candidates or sometimes from an employment agency. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties, including former employers, named referees, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.

4.2.  We also collect information about your educational and professional background from publicly available sources, including online, that we believe is relevant to your application or a potential future application, such as your LinkedIn Profile.

5.1.   Your information will be used by the Company for the purposes of carrying out its application and recruitment process which includes:

• Assess your skills, qualifications and suitability for the role.
• Making a decision about your recruitment or appointment.
• Determining the terms on which you work for us.
• Checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK.
• Keep records related to our hiring processes.
• Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

5.2.  It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role.

5.3.  We will then process your 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 or more than an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interviews to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references and/or any other check before confirming your appointment.

5.4.  If you are offered and accept employment with the Company, the information collected during the application and recruitment process will become part of your employment record. As an employee you will sign a contract of employment and agree to additional terms regarding how your personal information is processed and stored.

5.5.  We will also share your data for statistical analysis (it will be anonymised first) if we are required to do so by law - for example, by court order or to prevent fraud or other crime.

6.1.   You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide data to the Company during the recruitment process. However, if you do not provide the information, the Company may not be able to process your application properly or at all.

6.2.  You are under no obligation to provide information for equal opportunities monitoring purposes and there are no consequences for your application if you choose not to provide such information.

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

8.1.   We do not envisage that we will process information about criminal convictions, however we will notify you in writing if our position changes.

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

10.1.  Your information will be used internally within the Bit Bio Group for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. This includes members of the People & Culture team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, other recruitment decision makers in the Company and IT staff, if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.

10.2.  The Company will not share your data with third parties, unless your application for employment is successful and we make you an offer of employment. 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. The Company will then share your data with former employers to obtain references for you and with background check agencies to validate your work history and education/qualifications.

10.3.  If you are successfully recruited we will share your details to our HRIS system, Cascade. As an employee you will sign a contract of employment and agree to additional terms on how your data is handled and stored.

11.1.  We will not transfer the personal information we collect about you outside the EU other than within the Bit Bio Group.

12.1.  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.

12.2.  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.

13.1.  The Company will not use your data for any purpose other than recruitment. If your application is unsuccessful, we may keep your personal data on file for up to six months after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you for the role, in case there are future employment opportunities for which you may be suited or 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 or 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 write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

13.2.  In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

13.3.  If your application for employment is successful, personal information gathered during the recruitment process will be transferred to your personnel file and retained during your employment. The periods for which your data will be held will be provided to you in our employee privacy notice.

14.1.  Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during the course of the recruitment process with us.

14.2.  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 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 to continue processing 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.

To make any of these requests please contact the Talent Acquisition team at careers@bit.bio

14.3. 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.

14.4.  Right to withdraw Consent

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Talent Acquisition team on careers@bit.bio. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

15.1.  We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. When we make changes to this notice, the ‘last updated’ date at the bottom of this page will also change. Any changes to this privacy notice will apply to you and your data immediately. If these changes affect how your personal data is processed, we will take reasonable steps to let you know.

15.2.  If you have any questions about this privacy notice, or how we handle your personal information, please contact privacy@bit.bio.

15.3. You have a right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who is responsible for data protection issues in the UK.

bit.bio Candidate Privacy Notice | Last Updated March 2024