Candidate Privacy Notice

For the purposes of this notice, the data controller is Auto Trader Limited (registered in England and Wales under company registration number 03909628) and whose registered office address is at Auto Trader Limited, 4th Floor, 1 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester, M15 4FN (“Auto Trader”).

If you are applying for an advertised position at, or providing personal information to, Vanarama (who are an Auto Trader group company), the data controller is Autorama UK Ltd (trading as Vanarama) (registered in England and Wales under company registration number 05137709) and whose registered office address is at Vanarama, Maylands Avenue, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7DE (“Vanarama”).

In this notice, references to “we”, “us” and “our” mean either Auto Trader or Vanarama (whichever of them you are applying for an advertised position at or providing personal information to).

This privacy notice applies to all individuals (“you”) who: (i) send us any personal information regarding a recruitment opportunity or speculative recruitment opportunity; and/or (ii) apply for an advertised position via one of our careers sites at:

If you're visiting one of the above careers sites and do not make an application, we don't collect any personal information about you.

This policy makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used (namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise) and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES

To comply with the law, the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way;
Only collected and used for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you;
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; and
Kept securely.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

We will collect the following as part of your application:

Contact details (name, telephone number and email address);
A copy of your CV;
Any other information provided as part of the application such as employment history, passport and qualifications;
Any information you provide to us during an interview or assessment; and
Occupational testing and personality assessments results.

We may also collect, store and use the following types of more sensitive personal information:

Equal opportunities monitoring. E.g., Information about your ethnicity or sexual orientation (this is not a mandatory requirement); and
Information about your accessibility needs but only where necessary to make appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process.

We do not collect any personal information via cookies.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

You, the candidate;
Your named referees;
Any data from third parties that is publicly accessible;
Recruitment agencies (a full list of which can be provided on request);
External testing companies such as SHL Global Management Limited (SHL);
Background check providers such as Experian.

HOW WILL WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU?

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role;
Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable;
Communicate with you about the recruitment process;
Keep records related to our hiring processes; and
Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

It is in our legitimate interests to decide whether to appoint you to the role since it would be beneficial to our business to appoint someone to that role. We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract with you.

After reviewing your CV, application form and testing results as appropriate, we will then process that information to decide whether you are suitable to be shortlisted for the role. If you are shortlisted, we will decide whether we would like to invite you to an interview. If we decide to invite you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references before confirming your appointment.

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully.

HOW WILL WE USE SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU?

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

To consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, such as during an interview.
We will use personal diversity information to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.
If offered a role with us we will collect information about whether you have a criminal conviction before you commence employment (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory). Such check will only indicate whether you have a relevant conviction, and it will not reveal what the conviction was for.
We are entitled to carry out a criminal record check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for that role. In such circumstances we would always ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

WHO HAS ACCESS TO MY INFORMATION AND WHY DO THEY NEED IT?

The recruitment team within Auto Trader will have access to your personal information in order to match your details to current and future vacancies, to arrange assessments, and as may otherwise be needed, through to the final offer of employment.

Our hiring managers will have limited access to your information should your application progress through the recruitment process.

WHERE IS MY INFORMATION STORED AND DATA SECURITY?

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Our applicant tracking system is provided by Greenhouse, a third-party supplier. You can view their Privacy Policy here.

From time to time, we may need to share your personal information with other trusted partners and third parties as part of the recruitment process. However, we will only disclose your personal details when it is necessary to involve a third-party service provider in order to facilitate or extend recruitment services, such as occupational testing for ability and personality assessments. We may share your personal information with the following companies:

SHL Global Management Limited (SHL). You can view their privacy notice here
Experian. You can view their privacy notice here

Again, they will only process your personal information on our instructions, only when we have appropriate agreements in place with them and only where they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. All of our third-party suppliers have appropriate security measures in place to protect your data.

We may also share your personal information with our group companies.

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

HOW LONG DO YOU RETAIN MY DATA?

Your details will remain on our applicant tracking system throughout the recruitment process and whilst you are actively pursuing positions with Auto Trader.

Your personal information will be kept for 12 months from the date of the final decision on our recruitment system. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can match your experience to future opportunities and can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way.

After this period, we will email you to ask for your explicit consent to remain part of our talent community, meaning we retain your personal information for another 12 months. If you do not reply, or, choose not to give consent your details will be deleted.

REQUESTING ACCESS TO YOUR INFORMATION

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

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 and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
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 to continuing to process it.
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 situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground.
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 exercise any of these rights, please contact recruitment@autotrader.co.uk

When you applied for a role, you provided consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment process. You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application and, subject to our retention policy, we will dispose of your personal data securely.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact us at recruitment@autotrader.co.uk

COMPLAINTS

If you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by us (or third parties as described above), or how your complaint has been handled, in the first instance please email your concerns to recruitment@autotrader.co.uk