Privacy & GDPR / Terms of Business

Standard Terms of Business

These terms of business will regulate the basis upon which Brightsmith Group Ltd (the “Consultancy”) introduces candidates to (the “Client”) and they will be deemed to be accepted by the Client upon each request by the Client of the Consultancy (i) for details of candidates; or (ii) to commence a selection mandate; or (iii) to interview, or (iv) a decision by the Client to offer employment to, any candidate whose details are submitted to the Client by the Consultancy.

These Terms & Conditions of Business for the provision of recruitment services (“Terms”) are effective from 1st November 2022 and, unless otherwise agreed in writing by a Director of Brightsmith Group Ltd, constitute the entire and only agreement between the Client and Brightsmith Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (No. 12183487) with its registered office at Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK (“Brightsmith Group Ltd”).

Brightsmith Group Ltd acts as an employment business (as defined in Section 13(2) of the Employment Agencies Act 1973) when Introducing Candidates to the Client for Engagement by Client.

1.By notifying the Consultancy (verbally or in writing) of a vacancy or by agreeing to meet or employ any candidate introduced by the Consultancy the Client is deemed to accept and be legally bound by these terms and conditions.

2.Where applicable VAT will be charged at the prevailing rate.

3.The Client shall notify the Consultancy immediately upon acceptance of an offer of engagement.

4.Where a written offer of employment has been made by the Client and is later withdrawn by the Client after acceptance by the candidate through no fault of the candidate the normal fee will be payable by the Client.

5.Introductions of Candidates are confidential. If a Client discloses a Candidate’s details to a third party and, as a result, the third party Engages the Candidate within 12 months of the Consultancy’s Introduction of the Candidate to Client, then Client will be liable to the Consultancy for payment of an Introduction Fee in accordance. Client shall not be entitled to a refund of the Introduction Fee.

6.Unless otherwise agreed, fees will be charged at 30% of the total package of the candidates first year’s remuneration including all written, indicated or guaranteed payments (bonus and sign-ons) but excluding other benefits. Fees are issued upon signed acceptance of an offer.

7.Where a candidate has been submitted to a Client or is initially rejected by the Client or initially rejects that Client’s offer of employment and is subsequently employed by that Client in any capacity up to and including twelve (12) months after the initial introduction date, the Client shall be responsible for a full applicable fee.

8.If an Engagement commences and then terminates within the first 12 weeks, the Consultancy will then offer a free replacement or refund its Introduction Fee in line with the following sliding scale:

0 -4 weeks: 75% refund

5 – 8 weeks: 50% refund

8-12 weeks: 25% refund

In order to qualify for the refund set out in this clause:

i. The Client must have notified the Consultancy in writing within 7 days of the termination or non-commencement, or Client being on notice of the same (whichever is earlier);
The Client must give the Consultancy 8 weeks from the date of the notice of termination, on an exclusive basis, in which to find a suitable replacement Candidate based on the original specification given for the position the Client is seeking to fill; and

iii. the Engagement must neither have failed to commence nor have terminated due to redundancy, unlawful dismissal or resignation arising due to Client substantially altering the Candidate’s role or principal place of work.

If subsequent to the Client receiving a refund, either the Candidate is re-Engaged or a replacement Candidate is Engaged within a period of 12 calendar months from the date of termination, the refund must be repaid to the Consultancy without the Client then being entitled to further refunds in respect of such Engagement.

9.Should additional hires be made from this assignment, whether inside or outside the initial brief, these hires will be subject to the same fee terms detailed in clause 8.

10.All information relating to a Candidate is confidential and subject to the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA”) and is provided solely for the purpose of providing work-finding services to the Client. Such information must not be used for any other purpose nor divulged to any third party and the Client undertakes to abide by the provisions of the DPA in receiving and processing the data at all times. Information relating to the Consultancy business which is capable of being confidential must be kept confidential and not divulged to any third party, except information which is in the public domain.

11.Whilst every effort is made to maintain a reliable and professional service no liability can be accepted by the Consultancy for any of our employees for any services supplied.

12.The Consultancy Ltd shall not be liable under any circumstances for any loss, expense, damage, delay, costs or compensation (whether direct, indirect or consequential) which may be suffered or incurred by the Client arising from or in any way connected with the Consultancy seeking a Candidate for the Client or from the Introduction to or Engagement of any Candidate by the Client or from the failure of the Consultancy to introduce any Candidate. For the avoidance of doubt, the Consultancy does not exclude liability for death or personal injury arising from its own negligence or for any other loss which it is not permitted to exclude under law.

13.No warranty or representation express or implied is given in respect of any candidate introduced and no liability can be accepted by ourselves for any failure of the employee to perform or comply with his/her terms of employment or for any loss, expense, damage or delay however occasioned arising from the introduction of the candidate to the Client or his/her engagement by the Client.

14.The Consultancy shall treat as confidential all information received by or developed for it on behalf of the Client. All reports and documents of an assignment shall become the Client’s property, but the Consultancy’s consent is required if such documents are to be used outside the Client.

15.The Consultancy endeavours to ensure the suitability of Candidates Introduced to Client however Client shall be obliged to satisfy itself as to the suitability of the Candidate for the position they are seeking to fill. This includes Client being responsible for: (i) completing any reference and credit checks provided by the Candidate before Engaging the Candidate; (ii) checking the Candidate’s right to work and obtaining permission to work as may be required by the law of the country in which the Candidate is Engaged to work; (iii) the arrangement of medical examinations and/or investigations into the medical history of any Candidate; (iv) satisfying any medical and other requirements, qualifications or permission required for the Candidate to work in the Engagement

16.The Consultancy's payment terms are fourteen (14) days (issued once the Candidate accepts the offer of the Engagement, whether such offer is conditional or not). The Consultancy reserves the right to charge interest in accordance with the late payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 currently at 8% over Bank of England base rate. Client must indemnify the Consultancy against any costs, including but not limited to legal fees and disbursements, incurred by the Consultancy when seeking to recover monies due from Client in accordance with the Terms.

17.Any variation to these terms and conditions must be made in writing prior to commencement of the agreement.

PRIVACY NOTICE

BRIGHTSMITH GROUP LTD (”We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

Any mention of “Our Group” means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, our associated companies as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006 (our Group).

This notice sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) is a regulation which replaces the Data Protection Regulation (Directive 95/46/EC). The Regulation aims to harmonise data protection legislation across EU member states, enhancing privacy rights for individuals and providing a strict framework within which commercial organisations can legally operate.

The Brexit transition period ended on 31 December 2020 and the UK has now officially left the EU. The UK GDPR has been directly incorporated into UK law sitting alongside the Data Protection Act 2018.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purposes of data protection legislation in force from time to time the data controller is Brightsmith Group Ltd of 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX

Our nominated representative is Lauren Miller.

Who we are and what we do

We are a recruitment agency and recruitment business as defined in the Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 (our business). We collect the personal data of the following types of people to allow us to undertake our business;

Prospective and placed candidates for permanent or temporary roles;
Prospective and live client contacts;
Supplier contacts to support our services;
Employees, consultants, temporary workers;

We collect information about you to carry out our core business and ancillary activities.

Information you give to us or we collect about you.

We use Vincere, an online application provided by Access UK LTD, to assist with our recruitment process. We use Vincere to process personal information as a data processor on our behalf. Vincere is only entitled to process your personal data in accordance with our instructions.

The information you give us or we collect about you may include your name, address, private and corporate e-mail address and phone number, identification, financial information, compliance documentation and references verifying your qualifications and experience, curriculum vitae and photograph, links to your professional profiles available in the public domain e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, business Facebook or corporate website.

Information we collect from you.

We collect and process some or all of the following types of information from you:

Information that you provide when you apply for a role. This includes information provided through an online job site, via email, in person at interviews and/or by any other method. In particular, we process personal details such as name, email address, address, date of birth qualifications, experience, information relating to your employment history, skills and experience that you provide to us. If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence. A record of your progress through any hiring process that we may conduct. Details of your visits to Vincere’s Website including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, the site that referred you to Vincere’s Website and the resources that you access.

Information we obtain from other sources.

This is information we obtain about you from other sources such as LinkedIn, corporate websites, job board websites, online CV libraries, or your business card.

We may receive information about you from third parties for the purposes of our recruitment services and ancillary support services.

Purposes of the processing and the legal basis for the processing

We use information held about you in the following ways:

To consider your application in respect of a role for which you have applied.
To consider your application in respect of other roles.
To communicate with you in respect of the recruitment process.
To enhance any information that we receive from you with information obtained from third party data providers.
To find appropriate candidates to fill our job openings.
To help our service providers (such as Vincere and its processors and data providers) and Partners (such as the job sites through which you may have applied) improve their services.

Our legal basis for the processing of personal data is our legitimate interests, described in more detail below. We will rely on contractual obligations if we are negotiating or have entered into a placement agreement with you or your organisation or any other contract to provide services to you or receive services from you or your organisation.

Our Legitimate Interests

Our legitimate interests in collecting and retaining your personal data is described below:

As a recruitment business and recruitment agency we introduce candidates to clients for permanent employment, temporary worker placements or independent professional contracts. The exchange of personal data of our candidates and our client contact details is a fundamental part of this process.

In order to support our candidates’ career aspirations and our clients’ resourcing needs, we require a database of candidate and client personal data. The database will contain historical information as well as current resourcing requirements.

To maintain, expand and develop our business we need to record the personal data of prospective candidates and client contacts.

Consent

Should we want or need to rely on consent to lawfully process your data we will request your consent orally, by email or by an online process for the specific activity we require consent for and record your response on our system. Where consent is the lawful basis for our processing you have the right to withdraw your consent to this particular processing at any time.

Other Uses we will make of your data:

We will also use your data:

To administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
To improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you when you are using your computer or other devices;
To notify you about changes to our service;
To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
As part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
To measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
To make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.

We may use Vincere’s technology to select appropriate candidates for us to consider based on criteria expressly identified by us, or typical in relation to the role for which you have applied. The process of finding suitable candidates is automatic, however, any decision as to who we will engage to fill the job opening will be made by a member of our staff.

Do you have to provide us with personal data?

You may refuse to give us your personal and sensitive personal data. Furthermore, you have the right to ask us to delete, change or stop processing your data that we have already received or collected. If you do not provide us with personal or sensitive personal data, or if you request a restriction of processing however, we may not be able to provide you with the services that you have requested and that are stated in this policy.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies. If you do not want those cookies to run then please use the disable button below. We use only session cookies on this website. We may send to you the following cookies:

(1) JSESSION_ID cookie We may use the information we obtain from your use of our cookies for the following purposes:

(1) to recognise your computer when you visit our website; (2) to improve the website's usability; (3) to analyse the use of our website; (4) to connect to 3rd party services of benefit;

Third party cookies:

When you use our website, you may also be sent third party cookies.

Google Analytics:

We use Google Analytics to track visitors experience so we can continually improve our site and provide you with the most relevant information. Google Inc's registration is a http://safeharbor.export.gov/companyinfo.aspx?id=10543. For more information on the cookies set by Google Analytics please go to: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html. Google has also created their own opt-out plugin that you can get from: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Disclosure of your information inside and outside of the UK and the EEA

We will share your personal information with:

Any member of our group both in the UK, the EEA and outside of the EEA.

Selected third parties including:

Clients for the purpose of introducing candidates to them;
Candidates for the purpose of arranging interviews and engagements;
Clients, business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance and compliance obligations of any contract we enter into with them or you;
Subcontractors including email marketing specialists, event organisers, payment and other financial service providers.
Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site;
Credit reference agencies, our insurance broker, compliance partners and other sub-contractors for the purpose of assessing your suitability for a role where this is a condition of us entering into a contract with you.

We will disclose your personal information to third parties:

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If Brightsmith or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.

The lawful basis for the third party processing will include:

Their own legitimate 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.

Where we store and process your personal data

We store your personal data on the Vincere CRM system, and email systems within the UK and EEA.

The data that we collect from you and process using Vincere’s Services, may/will be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the UK or European Economic Area (”EEA”). It may be transferred to third parties outside of the UK or the EEA for the purpose of our recruitment services. It may/will also be processed by staff operating outside the UK or the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. This includes staff engaged in, among other things, our recruitment services and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this processing. Brightsmith will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice.

In particular, your data may be accessible to i) Vincere’s staff in the USA or ii) may be stored by Vincere’s hosting service provider on servers in the USA as well as in the EU. The USA does not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. A Data Processor Agreement has been signed between Vincere Software Limited and its overseas group companies, and between Access UK LTD and each of its data processors. These data processor agreements are designed to help safeguard your privacy rights and give you remedies in the unlikely event of a misuse of your personal data.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Retention of your data

We understand our legal duty to retain accurate data and only retain personal data for as long as we need it for our legitimate interests and that you are happy for us to do so. Accordingly, we have a data retention notice and run data routines to remove data that we no longer have a legitimate interest in maintaining.

We do the following to try to ensure that the data we hold on you is accurate:

Prior to making an introduction we check that we have accurate information about you.
We keep in touch with you so you can let us know of changes to your personal data.

We may store and handle your data in the following ways:

We may archive part or all of your personal data, and retain it on our Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) system.

Our current retention notice is available upon request.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for marketing purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for marketing purposes. We will collect express consent from you, if legally required, prior to using your personal data for marketing purposes.

You can exercise the right to not have your data used for marketing purposes at any time by contacting us at info@brightsmithgroup.com.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliate. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

The UK GDPR provides you with the right to:

Request correction of the personal information that 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 continuing to process 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 in certain formats, if practicable.
Make a complaint to a supervisory body which in the United Kingdom is the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO can be contacted through this link: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

Access to information

The Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK 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. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act and the UK GDPR.

A subject access request should be submitted to info@brightsmithgroup.com. No fee will apply unless the requests from a data subject are manifestly unfounded or excessive, in particular because of their repetitive character. In such circumstances, we may charge a fee or refuse to act on the request.

Changes to our privacy notice

Any changes we make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy notice.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice are welcomed and should be addressed to info@brightsmithgroup.com.