Supporting women in search (“SWISH”) take data privacy seriously. This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) explains who we are, how we collect, share, and use personal information, and how you can exercise your privacy rights.
Who are we?
SWISH is an independent, non-profit making networking group for women working in executive search. Our mission is to inspire and support women – with the aim of encouraging and coaching them to aspire to and achieve more senior roles.
We believe that the workplace should be flexible and accommodating to everyone. Women should be able to succeed on their own terms, and we hope that bringing together a wide range of mentors and peers who have made different choices in their careers will support others who are on their own path through this industry.
Here we summarise our policies regarding how all members of SWISH collect, use and transfer your personal data, the security measures we employ to protect such data as well as your rights regarding your personal data.
SWISH take our obligations under all data protection laws very seriously and work hard to ensure that we are holding personal data in a secure and compliant manner.
Data protection principles
We will comply with all relevant data protection laws. This states that the personal information we hold about you must be:
- Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
- Collected only for valid purposes and not used in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes
- Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
- Kept only as long as is necessary
- Kept securely
- Disposed of confidentially
Personal Data
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which the person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). We collect personal data on our members and applicants. The personal data we hold includes, but is not limited to, employment history, contact details, CVs, references, job preferences, compensation details or qualifications. We may from time to time also collect, store, handle and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information, such as information about health or disabilities, criminal convictions, offences and court judgements, but only where we are legally permitted to do so. We only collect sensitive data, and further process this data, where you have provided it and given your explicit consent for us to do so.
Personal data held by SWISH may be gathered from LinkedIn, Google, Company websites and other available sources or provided by you and third parties known to you (ie referees). We will also collect, process and store information provided to us through our website.
How we use personal data
By choosing to provide SWISH with your personal information you indicate your willingness to share and have your information stored by SWISH and to be considered, when appropriate, for SWISH’s services. We use candidate data to provide our recruitment and search services to you and to facilitate our clients’ recruitment processes. This information will only be used for the purpose for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason which is not incompatible with the original purpose. You may be contacted by SWISH if we believe it is something may be of interest or benefit to you, however you have the right to request the restriction of processing of your data. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose which is incompatible with the original purpose we will notify you and explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
We may also use personal information to respond to your inquiries and answer your questions, to provide you with requested information, and to undertake activities in connection with the conduct and management of our services.
Personal information may also be provided to approved third-party processors who will only process data as per our instructions. These third parties may include our secure database and relevant reference checking companies. They are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal data in line with our policies.
Data Security and Integrity
We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these specific measures are available upon request.
We use our best efforts to ensure that data is accurate, complete, current and reliable for its intended use. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures and safeguards to help protect your personal data from unauthorised access, misuse, alteration or loss. Our internal policies and procedures are designed to help ensure we, minimise risk and safeguard the privacy and accuracy of all data we collect or process. SWISH have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so, or if deemed necessary.
We reserve the right to transfer personal data to a third party in the event of a sale of SWISH, a merger or liquidation. You will be notified in the event of such transfer.
Use of Cookies
This site uses cookies – small text files that are placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. In general, cookies are used to retain user preferences, store information for things like shopping carts, and provide anonymised tracking data to third party applications like Google Analytics. As a rule, cookies will make your browsing experience better. However, you may prefer to disable cookies on this site and on others. The most effective way to do this is to disable cookies in your browser. We suggest consulting the Help section of your browser or taking a look at the About Cookies website which offers guidance for all modern browsers
Your Rights
Under certain circumstances, by law, you have 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 the 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.
- 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 once we have confirmed your identity.
- 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.
If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information. This is to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who does not have the right to receive it.
Contact Information
If you have further questions regarding the processing of your personal data, or are unhappy about how we’ve handled your data please contact out data protection and compliance team:
FAO: SWISH Data Protection Team
SWISH
Manfield House
1 Southampton Street
London
WC2R 0LR
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.
Changes to the Privacy Policy
SWISH reserves the right to modify or amend this Privacy Policy at any time and for any reason, as permitted by applicable law. If there are material changes to the Privacy Policy, we will post those changes here. You should therefore return here regularly to view our most up to date policy. If we make a material change to this Privacy Policy, we will post the revised policy on this web page, and obtain your consent if required by applicable law.