Applicant Records, Personal Data, and Data Protection Laws: Can Personal Data be Retained without Consent?

Question

Hi,

How do consulting companies justify keeping a candidate's application and personal details on file when the candidate has often not provided his/her personal consent during the application process?

Additionally, if consent was not provided, how do consulting companies maintain a "blacklist" when the candidate's records should otherwise be deleted?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi there,

If we talk about Europe, there are EU data protection rules, currently embodied in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which guarantee the protection of your personal data, but there’re a few ’buts’:

The company may collect, store and sometimes reuse your personal data if it is allowed to or has already asked your agreement
Sometimes they are using it IN your interests, so in that case situation does have a lot of loopholes and depends on the company’s inner work ethic and processes.
There’s also legitimate business purpose and some kind of legal basis in using and reusing personal information of candidates who used to work or applied for job positions in the company, but it is believed to be very debatable and causes a lot of controversies because mostly depends on organisation and its level of honesty. Actually it is a truly big problem for HR department first of all. Always have and highly like will be.

If you have any other questions - feel free to text me

GB