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Candidate privacy notice

Caroline Gardner Publishing Limited (company number 03401477), 253 to 255 Putney Bridge Road, London SW15 2PU, is responsible for the personal information you give us when you apply for a job. Questions about this notice: jobs@carolinegardner.com.

What we collect

Your name, contact details, optional home postcode, notice period, right to work answer, where you heard about the role, your answers to our application questions, your CV and any other documents you choose to send, any adjustments you ask for, your salary expectations and, if you choose to answer them, our equal opportunities monitoring questions. If you are invited to interview, our notes and, with your knowledge, recordings or transcripts of your interviews.

Why we use it

To assess your application and decide whether to take it further, to contact you about it, and to meet our legal duties, such as checking your right to work before any offer. Our lawful basis is taking steps at your request before entering a contract, and our legitimate interest in recruiting the right people. Right to work checks are a legal obligation.

How AI is used

We use an AI system (Claude, provided by Anthropic) to help us review applications fairly and consistently. It:

• prepares a profile of your application for the hiring manager: your career history (employers, job titles and time in each role), relevant experience and qualifications, how your experience matches what the role needs, and points to explore at interview. Your name, contact details and details that could reveal personal characteristics such as your age are left out;
• checks publicly available information about the employers on your CV, such as the Companies House register and company websites, to confirm they exist and to give the hiring manager context on their size and industry. It does not search for information about you;
• gives a view on whether to invite you to interview, with its reasons. The hiring manager only sees this after they have made and recorded their own decision, as a second opinion;
• checks uploaded files for hidden instructions aimed at AI systems.

The AI never makes a decision. Every decision about your application is made by a person at Caroline Gardner, who must record their own reason. You can ask for a person to review how your application was handled, and you can ask us for the reasons behind a decision. If you would rather your application was considered without the AI profile, email jobs@carolinegardner.com and we will pass it to the hiring manager without it. Anything you tell us about adjustments, and your equal opportunities answers, are never shared with the AI system.

Equal opportunities monitoring

After you apply, we ask whether you would like to answer some equal opportunities questions, such as your age group, ethnic group, whether you have a disability, and your religion or belief. Answering is entirely optional, every question has a "prefer not to say" option, and your answers make no difference to your application.

We use them only to check that our recruitment is fair, for example that people from different groups are invited to interview at similar rates, and to report on this as a B Corp. They are stored separately from your application, are never seen by the hiring manager, never shared with the AI system and never used in any decision. HR looks only at totals, and hides any group of fewer than five people so no one can be identified.

Some of these answers are special category information. We use them under the equality of opportunity condition in the Data Protection Act 2018 (Schedule 1, paragraph 8), and our legitimate interest in running fair recruitment. They are deleted with your application.

Your postcode

If you give us your postcode, HR uses it only to estimate travel time to our sites so we can talk practically about the role with you. It is never shown to the hiring manager and is not used to decide who is shortlisted.

Interview recordings and transcripts

Interviews usually take place on Microsoft Teams. First-round interviews are recorded, and later interviews may be recorded or transcribed, so the hiring team can review what was said accurately and fairly. We tell you before each interview starts, and you can ask for your interview not to be recorded or transcribed without it affecting your application. Recordings and transcripts are shared only with the people involved in the decision and are deleted automatically after 180 days.

Who sees it

Our HR team sees your full application. Our general privacy policy, covering customers and visitors to our website, is at carolinegardner.com/policies/privacy-policy.

Within Caroline Gardner, our HR team sees your full application. The hiring manager sees the profile described above and your answers, without your name or contact details, then your full details only if you are invited to interview. Your information is stored in our Microsoft 365 systems in the UK or EU. Our service providers (Microsoft, Cloudflare and Anthropic) process it on our behalf under contract. Some of this processing takes place outside the UK, including in the United States. Where it does, we rely on safeguards approved under UK data protection law, such as the International Data Transfer Addendum issued by the Information Commissioner.

How long we keep it

If you are not successful, we delete your application, including any equal opportunities answers, 6 months after the role closes, unless we have asked and you have agreed that we can keep it for future roles. We may keep anonymous totals that cannot identify you. If you join us, your application becomes part of your employee record.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your information, object to how we use it, or withdraw your application at any time by emailing jobs@carolinegardner.com. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.