Privacy Policy

For the purposes of this policy, when discussing ‘Realtime’, it covers both Realtime Recruitment and Realtime Associates Limited, both providing the same service, in the Republic of Ireland and the UK respectively. Realtime provide services to candidates seeking employment and to Clients seeking potential employees for their vacancies.

Dublin Office: Realtime Recruitment, 2nd Floor The Courtyard, Carmanhall Road, Sandyford, D18 F9T8, Republic of Ireland. Tel: +353 1 652 0 652

Belfast Office: Realtime Associates Limited, Urban HQ, 5-7 Upper Queen St, Belfast, BT1 6FB. Tel: +44 2895 211 121

At Realtime we work with lots of people, so looking after your information and protecting your privacy is extremely important to us. We are committed to providing you with the best possible service and to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  This privacy policy describes how we collect, use and process your personal data and applies to you whether:

  • We are helping you find a role
  • We have helped you find a role in the past
  • We are providing you with a service
  • You are applying to work for Realtime
  • You are providing a reference for a candidate
  • You are a contact from one of our clients or suppliers

What data do we collect about you and where does it come from? 

We usually collect information about your work history and education (CV) together with your name and contact details such as email address, phone number and address.  We understand that your CV is an important, personal document and we believe that you should be fully in control of the contents of your CV and who sees that information.  We will check with you that the information we are holding is up to date before submitting you for any roles.

We may also need to collect additional information such as ID documentation, nationality, right to work documentation, references, PPS Number / National Insurance Number and date of birth.  Some roles require additional checks such as financial and criminal records. Contractors placed by Realtime will be required to provide Financial information including some or all of the following – bank account details, company registration number and certificate, VAT number and certificate, billing contact address, PPS or NI number, daily rate details, applicable insurances. We will contact you to let you know if any of these are needed. This is data that you will provide us strictly for the purpose of your job search and the recruitment process.

If you provide a reference for someone we will hold your name, contact details and details of the reference you have provided. We would ask you to please let the person know before providing us with their personal details so that it will not be a surprise to them when we get in contact.

If you work for a current or potential client or supplier we may hold a limited amount of information such as your contact details, your company name and your position in the company.

The information that we collect about you will either have come directly from you or from a third party where you have shared your work history such as a job board, online CV directories, social media or a networking site or we may have found it in the public domain or been given some information from a referee.

Like many site operators, we collect information that your browser sends whenever you visit our Site (“Log Data”). When you visit our website, a record of your visit is made. This may include information such as your computer’s Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser type, browser version, the pages of our Site that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages and other statistics. The data is used completely anonymously, to determine the number of people who visit our website and the most frequently used sections of the site. This enables us to continually update and refine the site. If you use any forms on the website to send an email to us, a record will also be made of your email address and your telephone number.

In addition, we may use third party services such as Google Analytics that collect, monitor and analyse this data.

Cookies are files with small amount of data, which may include an anonymous unique identifier, which are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Like many sites, we use “cookies” to collect information. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our site.

How do we use your personal data? 

The main purpose of holding your data is to help you find roles and support you in your career development.  We will send you information about roles which we think may be of interest to you.  We will always contact you before putting your CV forward for a role.

Under GDPR we are required to let you know the lawful basis we are using to process your data.  Where possible, we will always seek your consent acquiring your data initially, and prior to submitting your details to a prospective employer or client.

As we are a recruitment business we also consider we have a ‘legitimate interest’ in using your data for these types of recruitment activities and therefore this also a basis on which we are holding and processing your personal data.

If you enter into an engagement with us we will need to hold and process the relevant information for the lawful basis of ‘performing a contract’. We will only ever process your personal data within the terms of any engagement or agreement which we have with you.

We review the data we hold about you regularly and we know that everyone’s career is different so the time between changing roles can vary from weeks to several years.  If we have had no contact with you for over five years we will remove your records from our candidate database, but we will contact you before doing this to ask if you would like to continue receiving information from us which might be of interest to you.

Please note that if you have entered into a contract with us there is certain information that we may be required by law to hold for a defined minimum period (typically 7 years) such as tax records and records of financial transactions.

Who do we share your personal data with? 

We may share your CV with our clients who are seeking to fill a role but we will always check with you before doing this.

If you have entered into a contract with us we will share relevant information with tax authorities as required by law.

We use various third-party IT suppliers which store and process data on our behalf.  We have appropriate data processing agreements and security measures in place with these suppliers as required by legislation.

We are committed to keeping your personal data safe and have a range of technical and operational security measures in place to protect the personal information we hold.

It may also be disclosed to a third party who acquires us, and the new owner or newly controlling party will, under the terms of this Policy, be permitted to use the Data for the purposes for which it was supplied by you.

In the event that any Data submitted by Users will be transferred in such a manner, you will be contacted in advance and informed of the changes. When contacted you will be given the choice to have your Data deleted or withheld from the new owner or controller.

Your Rights 

We hope that you find our recruitment services beneficial and are happy for us keep your personal data to enable us to provide you with the best service possible. The GDPR sets out the rights you have.  At Realtime we take our data responsibilities seriously but if you have any concerns which you think we haven’t addressed after contacting us about them, then you can raise these with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) in Ireland, or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK.  Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions or would like anything changing in the records we hold about you such as:

  • If you would like a copy of the information we hold about you (a data subject access request)
  • If you need us to make any changes because the information we are holding is inaccurate (known as the right to rectification)
  • If you wish to unsubscribe from direct marketing.  The easiest way to stop us sending you group mailings is to click the “unsubscribe” button on one of the mailings.  Otherwise, you can contact us directly to let us know by emailing [email protected] with the word Unsubscribe in the subject box. If you “unsubscribe” from group mailings we may still contact you individually for example about a specific role that may be of interest.
  • If you would like us to remove your data from our database (known as the right to erasure / to be forgotten), please email [email protected] with this request.  Please note that if there are any contractual or legal reasons for holding information about you, for example, you have worked for us as a contractor, we will need to continue holding relevant information about you.  Please also note that if your data is somewhere in the public domain such as a networking site like LinkedIn or a job board it is possible we may come across this and contact you again.  If this does happen it does not necessarily mean that we have captured your data on our systems, so please accept our apologies.  We would be happy to let you know where we found your data if you would like to know.

Where is the data stored?

We store information in several different ways, some may be physical in which case it is stored securely in access-controlled areas within our offices, or electronically in which case we utilise the services of cloud server providers which are currently based within the EEA.

We endeavour to ensure these providers comply with the regulations and best practices of Data Protection and Privacy. We will only work with such service providers within the terms of a formal, written Data Processor Agreement.

Updates to our Privacy Policy

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time, including as part of the European data protection legislation which will start to apply on 25 May 2018 (the “General Data Protection Regulation”). We will update the Privacy Policy and we will publish on our website any new version of this Policy. Please check the policy occasionally for information on such proposed changes.

Contacting Us 

If you would like to contact us about anything in this Privacy Policy you can do so by emailing [email protected].