Privacy Policy | kernconsulting

Introduction

Kern Consulting Ltd is an executive search firm which collects, uses and stores a variety of personal data necessary to provide such services.

Protecting your privacy is important to Kern Consulting Ltd. This Privacy Policy explains how Kern Consulting Ltd ("Kern," "we," "us," or "our") collects, uses, and discloses the information we collect.

THE DATA WE COLLECT

1. Executive Search Data

If you are a potential candidate for one of our executive search assignments, categories of personal data we collect may include: contact information (e-mail address, address, telephone number), career history, education history, social activities, compensation details (where permitted by applicable legislation), professional experience, languages, photographs, individual capabilities and preferences, personality, character traits, professional style profile, executive competencies, interview notes (if applicable), identification data (civil/marital status, gender, nationality), and contact history. This data may be obtained directly from you, through publicly available sources and/or third parties such as sources/referees, your professional networking profile, news reports and our authorised background check providers.

It is not Kern Consulting Ltd’s policy to seek any sensitive information about you unless done for legitimate recruitment purposes and we suggest that you do not provide information of this nature unless necessary.

2. Client or Supplier Data

If you are a Kern Consulting Ltd client or supplier, we will collect and use information about your company and individuals within your company for the purposes of fulfilling our obligations to you and furthering our business relationship. Data collected will typically comprise your contact details (such as name, telephone number, email address, job title, and business record related to our services).

3. How We Use Personal Data

We will not process your personal information in a way that is incompatible with what is outlined in this Privacy Policy and will use our best efforts to ensure that data is accurate, complete, current and reliable for its intended use.

4. Candidate and Assessment Data

The data is used in the usual course of our business to provide our services to clients. This may include assessing your suitability for executive and non-executive roles, presenting you as a potential candidate to potential employers (Kern Consulting Ltd’s clients), contacting you for an assignment (executive search or assessment) or verifying the details of your profile.

Your personal information may also be shared with third parties who we have engaged to provide services such as education checks and/or background checks, to the extent that the checks performed are appropriate and in accordance with local legislation, as well as our third party service providers who perform functions on our behalf such as outsourced document storage providers, all of whom will be required to process your personal information in accordance with applicable data protection laws and this Privacy Policy. Your personal information may also be shared with Referees or Sources in order to obtain additional information about you so we can provide a more accurate profile to our clients.

Finally, your information may also be shared with any competent law enforcement, regulatory or governmental body, or a court of law if necessary to exercise our legal rights, protect your interests or as a matter of applicable law.

5. Referee or Source Data

We will use the data collected to obtain information regarding your experience with, and thoughts and opinion on a particular candidate or potential candidate. If a candidate provides us with your details as a Referee, we may share your contact information with our clients in order to allow our clients to evaluate a candidate for a specific position. Any reference, opinion or feedback you provide as a Referee or Source shall in no case be attributed to you if shared with a client unless you provide us with permission to do so. We may also use your contact details to contact you in relation to any of our services that we believe may be of interest to you.

6. Client or Supplier Data

The data collected will be used in the context of the provision of our or your services. We may also use the data for other business purposes, including data analytics, benchmarking and statistic purposes. We may use the personal data collected to contact you in relation to any of our services that we believe may be of interest to you.

7. Legal basis for processing your personal information

Kern Consulting Ltd’s legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this policy will depend on the personal information involved and the context in which it was obtained.

We will process basic personal information from you, such as your contact details (name, address, email, phone number) and information that would normally be included in a curriculum vitae (CV) (education history, employment history, professional experience, compensation history where permitted by local law, etc.), and competencies, as well as any additional information that may assist us in connecting you to an executive search assignment (such as professional interests or relocation interest) or data that we may have obtained in the context of our leadership advisory services, on the basis of legitimate interests, provided the processing of such information is not overridden by your own privacy interests or your rights and freedoms as provided by law.

Once we proceed to further stages of a recruitment process, we will ask for your consent for additional processing activities, such as sharing your: CV; compensation history; information you may provide during interviews; information obtained through the use of our assessment techniques and tools; sensitive personal information (should you decide to voluntarily share this); any insights that we may provide to our clients; any additional information that may come to light during the search process.

8. Information Security and Integrity

To prevent unauthorised access, maintain accuracy of data and ensure proper use of information, Kern Consulting Ltd has implemented appropriate legal, physical, technical and security procedures to protect the confidentiality of and safeguard the personal information collected, and prevent against accidental loss, unauthorised access, or unlawful processing. These measures will be reviewed over time and upgraded to remain up to date with legal and technological developments.

9. Retention

Kern Consulting Ltd will retain your personal data only for as long as the data is needed in connection with the purposes for which it is being collected and used. The following criteria will be used to guide us when retaining your information:

We will retain personal data for as long as we maintain an active relationship with you;
Once our relationship with you has ended, your personal data may still be relevant for our current or future legitimate business purposes, for example we may be required to retain certain personal information for our business records if you have been placed into a role by us, or for us to be able to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
Certain data may be required to be kept in order to show we are compliant and have fulfilled our obligations towards our clients or to continue meeting any obligations we may have once we have completed an assignment for our clients in which you may have been involved.

10. Your Rights

You have the right to access, erase, correct, update or complete your personal data, to request the transfer of your personal data to a third party, or to request no further contact from Kern Consulting Ltd. Additionally, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information, request transfer of your personal information to a third party, or to withdraw your consent at any time. If you wish to exercise any of these rights you may contact tracey@kernconsulting.co.uk

Should you request that we remove your personal information from our database, please note that we may retain a minimal amount of personal information about you in order to prevent future contact, record your wish for your data to be removed, and to keep a record of the information disclosed to our clients.

Similarly, if we have collected and processed your personal information on the basis of your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect any processing performed prior to your withdrawal nor will it affect processing on the basis of lawful processing grounds other than consent.

If you choose to have your data deleted, we cannot guarantee that we will not contact you in the future through public data sources such as LinkedIn.

11. Data collected via our website

Our web server processes a range of data for each request, which your browser automatically transmits to our web server. This includes the IP address allocated to your device, the date and time of the request, the time zone, the specific page or file accessed, the http status code and the data quantities transmitted; in addition, the website from which your request originated, the browser used, the operating system of your device and the language used. The web server uses these data to make the contents of this website available in the best possible way on your device.

Kern Consulting Ltd uses browser cookies on this website. Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a website.

By using our website www.kernconsulting.co.uk you accept the use of cookies in accordance with this Cookie Policy. If you do not accept the use of these cookies please disable them by following the instructions to change your browser settings on your computer or mobile device.

The purpose of the data processing is the online presentation of Kern Consulting Ltd and our services. The purpose of the analysis of user behaviour on the website is the needs-oriented design of the website. No change in this purpose is planned.

The legal basis for the processing while using the website is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest, specifically operation of a website and user interaction).

The legal basis for the analysis of user behaviour is Article 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest, specifically the needs-oriented design of the website).

Our Website includes social media features, such as social media widgets that link to a social media website or allow you to share website content. These features may collect your IP address, which page you are visiting on our Website, and may set a cookie to enable the feature to function properly. Social media features, such as widgets, are either hosted by a third party or hosted directly on our Website. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing it.

Log and communications data are not passed on to third parties except under special circumstances. In the event of the suspicion of a crime or in investigative proceedings, data may be transmitted to the police and the public prosecutor’s office. We use processors by means of service agreements to perform services, in particular to provide, maintain and support IT systems.

12. Material Changes to the Privacy Policy

Kern Consulting Ltd reserves the right to modify or amend the Privacy Policy at any time and for any reason. If there are material changes to the Privacy Policy, we will post those changes here and take appropriate measures to keep you informed. Please check back to this Privacy Policy from time to time to stay informed.

If you have any questions about your personal information, please e-mail Kern Consulting Ltd at tracey@kernconsulting.co.uk