Privacy policy

Skills Alliance (Pharma) Limited (company number 05079848) (“Skills Alliance” “SA” “we”, “us”, or “our”) is committed to protecting and respecting the privacy of every individual who accesses and uses our website. We pride ourselves on providing our users a safe and secure user experience.

We provide work-finding services to clients and work-seekers. We process personal data (including sensitive personal data) so that we can provide these services — in doing so, the Company acts as a data controller.

This privacy policy explains how Skills Alliance processes and protects personal data about:

  • Candidates who register with us for roles that we are managing for other employers and for roles at Skills Alliance, or through our website, job boards, social media sites or other sources
  • Prospective candidates
  • Business contacts at our clients and suppliers
  • Users of our websites (collectively “you” or “your”).

It also tells you about your privacy rights including your right to object to our processing.

You have a legal right to object at any time to:

  • Use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes
  • Processing of your personal information which is based on our legitimate interests, unless there are legitimate ground for our continued processing

How do we collect information?

Information is collected from you when you engage with, contribute to or use the features on our website.

What personal information we collect?

Candidates: When you register with us as a candidate to provide work finding services to you, we process your personal data, including but not limited to your name, contact details and information from your CV. Where permitted by law, we may also collect information relating to your health (for example, disability information for reasonable adjustment purposes), diversity information, including race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation and religion as well as details of any unspent criminal convictions where required by a client or by us if you apply for a role with us.

If you use our website, click on links in emails we send to you, open or forward them, or sign up to receive job alerts or other content from us, we also collect personal data from those interactions.

We also obtain personal data about you from third parties, including:

  • Referees – when you are offered a job;
  • Former employers – to confirm dates of employment;
  • Educational institutions – to check your academic qualifications;
  • The Disclosure and Barring Service or Disclosure Scotland – if we need to obtain details of unspent criminal convictions;
  • Credit reference agencies – if we need to check your financial standing;
  • Publicly available sources such as LinkedIn and social media sites to enhance the information we hold about you, in order to help us find more suitable roles for you;
  • Clients to whom we have provided your CV and who have engaged with you as part of a job application or who have given feedback on your CV.

Prospective candidates: We collect personal data about you, including your name and contact details and professional biographical details obtained from publicly available sources such as LinkedIn and social media sites, so that we can contact you if we think you may be interested in our work finding services.If you use our website, click on links in emails we send to you, open or forward them, or sign up to receive job alerts or other content from us, we also collect personal data from those interactions.
Prospective business clients: We collect your contact details and data relating to your function or position to establish commercial relationships with your company. Skills Alliance will act as Data Controller of your data.

Users of our website: We collect personal data such as your IP address and other data about your device which we need to provide our online content to you. We also collect data about your engagement with our website or apps such as the pages you view. If you contact us, we will also collect information about your enquiry.

Clients: We collect personal data such as your name, job title and contact details. We also process personal data about what communications we have had with you, including whether you have opened or forwarded any emails, newsletters or other content we have sent to you. We also process feedback that you provide about our candidates.

If you provide information to us about a candidate, then we will obtain your details from the candidate and we will keep a record of the personal data that you provide to us about that candidate.

We process personal data about you from public domain sources such as LinkedIn and social networking sites or because you were a delegate at one of our events or at an event where the event organiser is permitted to share delegate details with us.

Suppliers: We typically collect your name and contact details as a business contact for your organisation.

How we use your information?

We use your personal data to:

  • to enable us to give you the best user experience
  • provide you with work finding services
  • to communicate with you
  • to maintain our business relationship, where you are a user of our website, a client or candidate
  • to provide our recruitment services to you and to facilitate the recruitment process.
  • to improve our customer service.
  • to enable you to submit your CV, apply online for jobs, or to subscribe to alerts
  • to send information to prospective employers and clients in connection with the recruitment process in order for them to assess your suitability
  • to fulfil contractual obligations with our clients
  • to send you information about details of surveys, promotions, offers, networking or client events, and general information about the industry sectors or jobs which we think might be of interest to you
  • determine if you may be interested in our services and how we can assist you
  • to contact you and find out if you are interested in our services
  • to trusted third parties where we have retained them to provide services that you or our client has requested. Some examples of these are; references, qualifications and criminal reference checking services, verification of the details you have provided from third party source, psychometric evaluation or skill test.
  • to regulatory or law enforcement agencies if we believe that we are required by law to disclose it in connection with the detection of crime, the collection of taxes or duties, in order to comply with any applicable law or order of a court of competent jurisdiction, or in connection with legal proceedings.
  • to use your information on an anonymised basis to monitor compliance with our equal opportunities policy.
  • to respond to enquiries, feedback and complaints.

We reserve the right to transfer your information to a third party in the event of a sale, asset sale, merger, equity liquidation, receivership or transfer of all or substantially all of the assets of our company provided that the third party agrees to adhere to the terms of this Privacy Policy and provided that the third party only uses your Personal Data for the purposes that you provided it to us. You will be notified in the event of any such transfer and you will have the legal right to object.

Our legal basis for processing your personal information

The main grounds that we rely upon in order to process personal information of clients and candidates are the following:
(a) Necessary for entering into, or performing, a contract — in order to perform our obligations in providing a service to you, or in order to take steps at your request to enter into a contract with us, it will be necessary for us to process your personal data;
(b) Necessary for compliance with a legal obligation — we are subject to certain legal requirements which may require us to process your personal data. We may also be obliged by law to disclose your personal data to a regulatory body or law enforcement agency;
(c) Necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests — either we, or a third party, will need to process your personal data for the purposes of our (or a third party’s) legitimate interests, provided we have established that those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms, including your right to have your personal data protected. Our legitimate interests include responding to requests and enquiries from you or a third party, optimising our website and customer experience, informing you about our products and services and ensuring that our operations are conducted in an appropriate and efficient manner;
(d) Consent — in some circumstances, we may ask for your consent to process your personal data in a particular way.

Overseas transfers

The Company may 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. We will take steps to ensure adequate protections are in place to ensure the security of your information.

Can you access, update or delete your information?

You have the right to Access your information, ask us to correct your details, object to processing, restrict processing of your personal information for a specific purpose at any time. We may ask you to verify your identity and for more information about your request.

If you would like to make a request for information, be erased from our database or update any information we hold about you please contact gdpr@skillsalliance.com. We will act on your request in the timescale set out by applicable data protection laws.

If you have created an account via the ‘candidate section’ of our website, you can log into your ‘my account’ area and adjust your personal data settings. If you wish to delete your personal data, a ‘Request to be forgotten’ button in your private profile area can be used to send us a request.

You also have the right to object to use of your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

How long do we hold your information?

We will keep your personal data for as long as we need to in order to fulfil the purpose we collected it for, which may be an ongoing purpose.

We keep some personal data for longer than others. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider factors such as the purposes for which we process your personal data, including any legal, regulatory, accounting and reporting obligations, the nature and amount of personal data that we hold about you, and the potential risk of harm to you from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data.

Where we process your personal data for direct marketing purposes, we will do so until you ask us to stop, and for a short period after this (to allow us to implement your request). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your data indefinitely, so that we can respect your request.

Alert
It has come to our attention that clients and candidates are being contacted by individuals fraudulently impersonating Skills Alliance representatives. If you receive a suspicious message, please DO NOT click on any links or attachments. We will never ask for bank/card details through phone calls. Our recruitment services are provided to candidates free of charge. If you are asked to make a payment, it is NOT a legitimate request from Skills Alliance. If you receive any communication claiming to be from Skills Alliance and are uncertain about its authenticity, please contact us directly.