Privacy Notice

SecsintheCity is part of Reach Plc and is a job site which allows you to search and apply for jobs across the UK. This notice outlines the data we collect on SecsintheCity, how we use it, who it is shared with and why, and how long it is kept.

Who we are and how to contact us

We are Reach Work Limited, the data controller, trading as SecsintheCity, a subsidiary of Reach plc, the largest commercial national and regional news publisher in the UK.

We can be contacted at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5AP.

You can email us at: cs@secsinthecity.co.uk.

For Data Subject Rights Requests please contact cs@secsinthecity.co.uk.

For general data protection queries you can contact the Data Protection Officer for Reach plc via dataprotection@reachplc.com.

About this Privacy Notice

For ease of use we have arranged this Privacy Notice under the following headings:

  • What data we collect & what we do with it
  • Our Legal Basis
  • How long we keep it for
  • Who we share it with and why
  • International Transfers of Personal Information
  • Your rights under data protection laws
  • Last updated date

In this notice, "we", "us", and "our" refer to SecsintheCity.

What data we collect & what we do with it

When you browse our website, to provide the best job seeker experience, we and our partners use cookies and similar technologies to store and access device information.

We provide a Consent Management Platform (CMP) to help you to manage your preferences. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as job application information (the roles you’ve browsed and applied for), your marketing preferences, and information about job alert emails created to allow us to better understand your needs and provide services to you.

We also collect statistical, aggregated data about all our site visitors to help monitor site performance, maintain site security, improve our services and prevent fraud.

To access the CMP please go to the ‘co’ icon at the bottom left of every webpage.

Further information on how we use cookies can be found in our Cookie Notice.

When you sign up for a newsletter, we will use your email address to send you relevant jobs and careers advice newsletters.

When you apply for a job and create an account you will need to provide a minimum set of basic personal data eg. your name and email address. You can also add more details, such as location and salary bands. These details will be used to better understand the roles that you are interested in.

You can create email job alerts so that you are notified of the latest relevant roles and choose whether to receive these daily or weekly. You can edit, delete or unsubscribe from these at any time. You can also sign up to career related newsletters to help you with your job search.

When you create an account you can upload your CV to make it easier to apply for jobs. If enabled, your CV is also viewable by recruiters, who may headhunt you directly for new roles. We also offer an optional CV review from TopCV.

When you create a recruiter account you will need to provide a minimum set of contact details, including some personal data (name and business email address) that relates to you and any additional company users you add to your account. Providing this information enables you to advertise a job or search our CV database. When you make a payment to us, either online or over the phone, we and the third party payment provider that we use, will process these financial transactions in order to make certain services available to you.

When you participate in one of our surveys we will use your responses to produce anonymous statistics that will be shared on our website.

If you participate in our PA of the Year Awards either by self-nomination or if you are nominated by a colleague some of your personal information will be submitted as part of the nomination process. This will include your email address, the organisation you work for and your job title. This information enables us to create a shortlist of candidates to interview and select a winner for each award category.

If you would like to read more about our current and past Awards you can visit our blog.

Our Legal Basis

Where we use consent to process your personal data

The legal basis for our use of cookie data is consent, obtained via the Consent Management Platform. If you reject the use of cookies we will only use those classed as ‘Essential’, based upon our legitimate interest.

When you opt to use the TopCV review service, you will be required to give your consent, and SecsintheCity will transfer your CV on your behalf. TopCV acts as the data controller in relation to your CV review. Their Privacy Notice can be viewed here: https://www.topcv.co.uk/privacy.

We rely on your consent to send you job alerts and newsletters by email. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time, either by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the footer of the email, or by updating your marketing preferences within your SecsintheCity profile. You can also remove consent for data sharing and marketing by contacting cs@secsinthecity.co.uk.

We also rely on your consent to participate in any surveys that we are hosting on our website.

Where we use Legitimate Interest

The legal basis for processing your data to create an account and a jobseeker profile, upload your CV, provide specific job recommendations and progress job applications is Legitimate Interest.

When you upload your CV, as you create a jobseeker profile, recruiters will be able to view both your CV and your profile, so that they may contact you directly about new roles. The legal basis for this type of processing is Legitimate Interest and you can change the settings on your CV to keep it private at any time on your profile page.

Legitimate interest is also our legal basis for processing your personal data to understand your job search behaviours, activities and preferences, deliver you relevant content, improve existing products and services and handle customer queries, complaints or disputes.

Where data needs to be processed for preventing, investigating and detecting crime, fraud or anti-social behaviour we will do so on the basis of our legitimate interest.

For recruiters we will process your contact details and other personal data relating to your account administration, plus any additional users that you add. We use these details based on our legitimate interest in managing and administering our relationship with you. This usage also applies to any communications that we send to the email address(es) that are associated with your recruiter account.

If you are nominated for our PA of the Year Awards, we will process a minimal amount of information to enable us to create a shortlist. If you are selected for interview, we will contact you with relevant information about the nomination process, including arranging an interview. We use the information provided during the nomination and selection process on the basis of our legitimate interest in organising and running an annual Awards to recognise outstanding performers.

Where we use Legal Obligation

We may process your data and co-operate with appropriate bodies and authorities where we are required to by law, a court order, a regulatory authority, or otherwise, including with the police and trading standards.

How long we keep it for

Cookies: Cookie data will be retained for the periods defined within the Cookie Management Platform (CMP).

Profile & CV: As a candidate, you are in complete control of how long we retain your CV, and the associated profile data; you can amend or delete your data at any time either within your profile or by submitting a request. For further information on how to do this, please see our ‘Your rights under data protection laws’ section.

For candidates that do not request the deletion of their CV and profile data, and whose accounts have become dormant, we will implement a retention period based upon the needs of our candidates and business. We subject this retention period to regular review, taking into account changes in industry practices, and regulatory requirements and guidance. At the end of this period, we will contact you to inform you that we will be removing your information from our systems.

Job Alerts & Newsletters: We will keep your data until you unsubscribe or delete your account.

Surveys: We won’t keep your survey data for longer than 24 months after a survey. After this period, we will retain the survey responses in an aggregated form to enable year-on-year reporting.

Awards: Once the nomination window closes, we will not keep any data concerning individuals that have not been shortlisted. If you would like to read more about past winners, visit our blog.

Who we share it with and why

If you have opted to upload your CV and set it to “visible” then recruiters and employers who have an agreement with us may view your CV and contact you about jobs which they consider match your experience. We ask recruiters to only retain your CV for as long as necessary and not to use it for purposes other than recruitment.

We work with various service providers to ensure that you receive the best possible job seeker experience, and as such we may share some of your data with them for the purpose of providing our services. Any service provider who processes your data in order to deliver a relevant service to us is governed by strict contractual arrangements to ensure that they comply with data privacy and protection requirements. The service providers are as follows:

Email Platform Provider

SecsintheCity uses an email platform to send marketing emails, such as newsletters, based on the data you have provided (e.g. your location, and job title).

The email platform vendor uses an approved supplier to provide a real-time marketing system, to allow us to deliver relevant jobs to candidates on both the website and through email. This service utilises browsing data, profile data, consent confirmation, your email address and your first and last name where this is provided.

Analytics

SecsintheCity uses Amplitude to collect data on website activity. 

Amplitude data will be retained by us until you remove your account, or request its deletion, at which point the data will be anonymised.

Multiposter Job Posting Platforms

Multiposters are job posting platform providers whose software allows recruiters and employers to post their job adverts in one place and distribute the advert to multiple job boards in one step. All application data is returned to the multiposter platform, including the CV of the applicant.

Some of our clients choose to post their vacancies using multiposter software. Currently SecsintheCity integrates with the below multiposter platforms.

Multiposters are contractually restricted from selling or disclosing the personal information of candidates.

Top CV

SecsintheCity partners with Top CV to offer you a free CV review service. This is an optional service, and you can choose whether or not to share your personal email address and CV with them. They are a data controller in their own right, you can review the Top CV Privacy Notice here: https://www.topcv.co.uk/privacy/.

Survey Platforms

SecsintheCity uses a survey platform to collect information from live surveys that we conduct online.

PA of the Year Awards

SecsintheCity partners with event sponsors to organise and host our annual Awards. The event sponsor will also participate in the judging process with SecsintheCity so if you are shortlisted, we will share your information with the event sponsor.

How we work with group companies

Secsinthecity receives information from, and shares information with, other companies within the Reach Group to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customise, support, and market our services and their offerings. This includes:

  • helping improve infrastructure and delivery systems;
  • understanding how our services or theirs are used;
  • promoting safety, security and integrity across the Reach Group e.g. securing systems and fighting spam, threats, abuse, or infringement activities;
  • performing analytics and analysis of how you interact with the group’s products and services, to facilitate business efficiencies and develop products and services that would be relevant to you; and
  • sharing information to deliver more relevant advertising from across the Reach Group network.

International Transfers of Personal Information

When you provide information to us, we may transfer your personal information to our group companies and processors who are based in a country other than your country of residence. For example, if you are a UK citizen you may find your data is processed by a supplier or service based outside the UK or EEA, such as in the United States. If such a transfer requires us to apply additional safeguards to your personal information under, for example, UK or European data protection laws, we will do so.

These steps may include implementing the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement clauses or European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, with additional UK-specific clauses for transfers of personal information to our service providers and business partners. Alternatively we will ensure the third parties we work with will offer an adequate level of protection by meeting the legally agreed requirements of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and the UK extension, as appropriate.

To the extent applicable, we may rely on derogations as set forth in Article 49 of the GDPR for the transfer and onward transfer of personal information collected from individuals in the UK or EEA to the United States, and other countries that the EU views as not providing adequate data protection. Specifically, we may transfer such information to another party in accordance with our lawful basis for processing.

Safeguarding your data

When creating and managing your account, please do not share any personal data that could be considered sensitive, whether in your personal statement, your CV, or job application cover letter. This includes data such as health conditions, date of birth, passport number, racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, bank details and photographs. Whilst we endeavour to ensure the security of all data we hold, it is your responsibility to provide only data which is appropriate to your job search. If you upload data which is considered sensitive, you accept that you do so at your own risk.

There may be times (e.g. surveys) when we ask you to provide some sensitive data such as ethnicity. Participating in our surveys is voluntary and we will interpret your participation as acceptance of the fact that your responses will be used to generate aggregated statistics.

If you choose to create an account, email us or upload a CV to our database, we rely on you to ensure that your details are kept up to date. You should update your CV at least every six months, particularly if your contact details have changed.

Your rights under data protection laws

Users of our services have certain rights under data protection laws, although several of the rights are not absolute. The rights are as follows:

Your right of access to data we hold about you - You have the right to access any personal data that we hold about you.

Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

To update your personal information, please follow these steps:

  1. Sign in as a jobseeker.
  2. Click on your name on the top right of the page
  3. Select ‘Your account’ from the drop down.
  4. Click ‘Personal Details’, ‘Email Address’, or ‘Password’ as required.
  5. Enter your new details and click ‘Update personal details’.

Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

Rights in relation to automated decision making - You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing which produces legal effects.

Please note that SecsintheCity does not undertake such activities.

Your right to erasure / to be forgotten - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

To delete your account, please follow these steps:

  1. Sign in as a jobseeker.
  2. Click on your name on the top right of the page
  3. Select ‘Your account’ from the drop down.
  4. Click ‘Delete your account’.
  5. Enter your password on the pop up to confirm deletion of your account.

When you delete your profile and CV from SecsintheCity, we do not keep a copy of your data other than your email address, unless you ask us to delete this too. We are not responsible for how recruiters and employers who have already received or downloaded your CV store your personal details and your CV.

How to Complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, please make a complaint to us in the first instance at cs@secsinthecity.co.uk.

The Data Protection Officer can be contacted at dataprotection@reachplc.com.

You can also complain to your Data Protection Authority if you are unhappy with how we have used your data or handled your complaint.

In the UK this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK95AF

ICO website: https://ico.org.uk/

Helpline Number: 0303 123 1113

If you are based in an EU country, you can find the details of your local supervisory authority here.

Last updated: 30/07/2024

We may update this Privacy Notice from time-to-time by posting a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes. Where changes are material we may also notify you of such changes by email.