Privacy Notice – Optimal Financial Recruitment

Welcome to Optimal Financial Recruitment UK Limited’s privacy notice.

Optimal Financial Recruitment respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data as users of our website and otherwise as our candidates, hirers and business contacts. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) or otherwise engage with us and it tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

Please use the Glossary at the end of this policy document to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy notice.

Important information and who we are

Purpose of this privacy notice

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how Optimal Financial Recruitment collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website or when you engage with our services to seek work or to hire staff or otherwise do business with us in some way.

Our website and services are not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children who are under 18.

It is important that you read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice or policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements other current or future notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them, except when stated otherwise.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
Collected only for 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 only to those purposes.
Accurate and kept up to date.
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
Kept securely.

Controller

Optimal Financial Recruitment UK Limited is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “Optimal Financial Recruitment” “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights set out below, please contact the DPO.

Contact details

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or our privacy practices, please contact our DPO in the following ways:

Full name of legal entity: Optimal Financial Recruitment UK Limited

Name of DPO: Rob Strichartz

Phone: 1.480.540.6886

Email: rob@optfr.com.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Changes to the privacy notice and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. Historic versions can be obtained by contacting us.

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.

Third-party links

This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Third party hirer privacy notices

As part of the performance of our contract/service to a candidate, their personal data will be passed to hirers upon the candidate’s request. In that case, the hirer will become an independent controller of that personal data which it holds and processes and the candidate should request a copy of the hirer’s relevant privacy notice.

The data we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.
Contact Data includes billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us, to the extent that might be relevant to any individual engaging with us.
Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website
Profile Data includes your photograph (if used by you), username and password, purchases or orders or job applications made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses and any social media tags or personal data you share with us via social media or otherwise.
Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.
Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.
Candidate Recruitment Data includes, but only where you are a work seeker using or have used our services for work finding purposes, data in connection with your registration on our systems and which may include the following categories of personal information about you:

The information you have provided to us in your registration with us and in any documents you attach with your registration or otherwise send to us, such as your curriculum vitae and any covering letters or in any job application form including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, date of birth, gender, employment history and current roles, skills, languages spoken, qualifications and approvals and certifications with regulatory bodies, and salary/role/opportunity expectations and current remuneration details.
Any information ex-employers might provide to us such as references and confirmation of job history data or biography or image data on their websites.
Information about your race or ethnicity and right to work in the UK or the appropriate jurisdiction, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions, where it is appropriate for us to process such data.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records, where it is appropriate for us to process such data.
Information about criminal convictions and offences, where it is appropriate for us to process such data.
Information (including any opinions about you and your suitability for a role) provided to us by hirers you are applying to or which we/you are in communications with about a role or potential role.
Information provided by contacts of yours who referred us to you and any opinions provided by such persons.
Information made available by authorities about you where that is relevant for us to process, such as information provided by the Financial Regulation Authority or the Prudential Regulation Authority or HM Revenue & Customs (or similar authorities or regulators in other jurisdictions).

We may also from time to time collect, use and share aggregated data of our users such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Such aggregated data could be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect aggregated data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

Except in appropriate circumstances in respect of Candidate Recruitment Data, we do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Except in appropriate circumstances in respect of Candidate Recruitment Data, we do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

Where we process Special Categories of Personal Data and criminal records data of candidates for reasons related to employment, we have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. This is the main reason and lawful basis used for processing Special Categories of Personal Data.

If you fail to provide personal data

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide candidates with effective recruitment services). In this case, we may have to cancel a service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

Direct interactions. You may give us your Identity, Contact, Marketing and Communications and Candidate Recruitment Data by registering with us, filling in forms or by corresponding with us by LinkedIn post, phone, email or otherwise or directing us to your website or social media accounts. This includes personal data you provide when you:

Register for our services;
subscribe to our publications;
request marketing to be sent to you;
enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
give us feedback or contact us.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may from time to time automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive or might receive from time to time personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:

Candidate Recruitment Data from our hirer clients who you engage with and also your current and ex-employers, as well as potentially authorities and regulators in the countries in which you operate
Technical Data from analytics providers
Contact and Transaction Data from providers of technical, payment and delivery services
Identity and Contact Data from data brokers or aggregators
Identity and Contact Data from publicly available sources such as Companies House

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.

Please see the explanation of “Lawful Basis” in the Glossary at the bottom of this privacy notice to find out more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data although we will get your consent before sending third party direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Purposes for which we will use your personal data

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.

Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new client / candidate / supplier	(a) Identity(b) Contact(c) Profile(d) Candidate Recruitment	Performance of a contract with you/your company
To process your order (mainly for hirers and not for data subjects who are candidates) including:(a) Manage payments, fees and charges(b) Collect and recover money owed to us	(a) Identity(b) Contact (c) Transaction(d) Marketing and Communications	(a) Performance of a contract with you/your company(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us)
To manage our relationship with you and provide our services and our website, which will include:(a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy notices and policies(b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey(c) Providing recruitment related services (contacting and dealing with hirers about you and dealing with you about hirers)	(a) Identity(b) Contact(c) Profile(d) Technical (e) Marketing and Communications(f) Candidate Recruitment	(a) Performance of a contract with you/your company(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation(c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)
To administer and protect our business and our website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data and seeking legal and other professional advice in respect of our business)	(a) Identity(b) Contact(c) Technical(d) Profile (e) Candidate Recruitment	(a) Performance of a contract with you/your company (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise)(c) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences	(a) Technical(b) Usage	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you, including by keeping candidate contact data on our databases given the strong ongoing relationships between us and candidates and the strong likelihood of future conversations	(a) Identity(b) Contact(c) Technical(d) Usage(e) Profile(f) Marketing and Communications	Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business)

Promotional offers from us

We may use your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage, Profile and Candidate Recruitment Data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you. This is how we decide which products, services and offers or job opportunities may be relevant for you (we call this marketing).

You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us and you have not opted out of receiving that marketing.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by by contacting us at any time.

Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, we will still hold and process personal data about you in accordance with this privacy notice.

Cookies

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see https://www.optimalfinanicalrecruitment.com/policies/cookies

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us.

If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Automated Decision Making

We do not engage in any automated decision making about our candidates or other data subjects, to our knowledge.

Disclosures of your personal data

We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table above.

Internal Third Parties as set out in the Glossary.
External Third Parties as set out in the Glossary. We do not sell your data to any such third parties. Any transfers are necessary and/or lawful for the purposes set out in this privacy notice.
Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International transfers

We share your personal data within our Group, which includes transfers to the USA. This will involve transferring your data outside the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA).

Many of our external third parties are based outside the UK and the EEA so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK and the EEA.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK and the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the UK government and by the European Commission. For the avoidance of doubt, the UK and EU have agreed reciprocal arrangements about such matters.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe. These are called standard contractual clauses and we ensure that an appropriate risk assessment has been carried out to accompany use of such contractual protections.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK and the EEA.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions or their mandatory legal requirements and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention

How long will you use my personal data for?

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements, and often that is for 6 years given limitation periods on legal and tax matters. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

Details of retention periods for different aspects of your personal data will be made available on request.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Your legal rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please see the Glossary below under “Your Legal Rights” to find out more about these rights:

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact our DPO

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

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 your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Glossary

LAWFUL BASIS

Legitimate Interest means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can obtain further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you in respect of specific activities by contacting us.

Performance of Contract means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal obligation means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to.

THIRD PARTIES

Internal Third Parties

Any other companies in our corporate group from time to time. At present there are no such other companies.

External Third Parties

Candidate data will be shared with hirers and which may involve transfer of candidate data to the hirer’s processors, such as their service providers, advisors, HR and Applicant Tracking technology providers (such as Bullhorn https://www.bullhorn.com/privacy/) and on LinkedIn (as a user of LinkedIn candidates will already be aware of its privacy notice) and email provider (currently Enguard https://www.enguard.com/Privacy-Policy ) and minimal identification data may be shared on our Xero accounting system https://www.xero.com/uk/legal/privacy//. Candidates should seek relevant privacy notices from hirers as hirers in that case will then be independent controllers, using the data for their own purposes. Contact details and information about hirer staff may be shared with candidates.
Web hosting service providers.
Professional advisers acting as processors or joint or independent controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, marketing, and accounting and other professional services.
HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as independent controllers who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances, or similar in EEA countries as applicable.

YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.

Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.

Object to processing of your personal data 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 as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.

Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:

If you want us to establish the data’s accuracy.
Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.
You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.

Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.