Recruitment Privacy Notice

Bridgestone Recruitment and Talent Community

Privacy Notice

Introduction

This Privacy Notice describes how Bridgestone Europe NV/SA and its subsidiaries (collectively referred to as “Bridgestone”) collect, use, handle and store (further referred to as “processing”) personal information in the scope of its online and offline recruitment activities. This Privacy Notice further explains the data subjects’ options and rights regarding our recruitment activities.

Material and Territorial Scope

This Privacy Notice applies to Bridgestone’s processing of personal data of job applicants, potential candidates for employment, Bridgestone employees who seek a different role within the organization, persons who have expressed an interest in a career at Bridgestone, and persons which Bridgestone believes would be a suitable candidate for employment (all categories hereafter also referred to as “candidate”, “you” or “your”), in connection with:

  • Bridgestone’s career website 
  • Bridgestone’s Talent Community
  • Bridgestone’s recruitment activities in general.

This Privacy notice applies to the recruitment activities of Bridgestone tyre manufacturing a retail operations and mobility solutions, for any of its locations in the Bridgestone Group, including entities in the European Union, United Kingdom, Switzerland, South Africa and United Arab Emirates  (the “Territory”), unless the Bridgestone entity you applied for a job has published its own recruitment privacy policy.

Who is responsible for processing the personal data?

Bridgestone Europe NV/SA (hereafter also referred to as “we”), with registered office at Da Vincilaan 1, 1930 Zaventem, Belgium,  is the data controller in relation to all personal data of current and potential job candidates for a processing taking place under this policy.

Personal data processed relating to the Talent Community

When you actively respond to a job vacancy

Bridgestone stores in its Talent Community database various personal data relevant for recruitment that you have voluntarily shared, or that we deem necessary to assess your job candidacy, creating a candidate profile, including:

  • Your name, date of birth, contact details including postal address, country of residence, nationality, e-mail address and telephone number.
  • Details of your qualifications, references, education, interests, skills, experience and employment history.
  • Information about your current and expected level of remuneration, including benefit entitlements.
  • Your expectations of working at Bridgestone.
  • Your motivation to work for Bridgestone.
  • Other data that you decide to share with us (for instance a photograph, third party references, marital status, ….) Information that applicable laws require us to collect
  • Other data that may be relevant for recruitment, such as visa and immigration status, expatriation, flexibility of relocation, etc…

Bridgestone does not collect, accept, process or use for purposes of recruitment, sensitive data, such as data revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, trade union membership, health data or data revealing sexual orientation. However, if you apply for a job with Bridgestone in South Africa, Bridgestone’s affiliate in South Africa will request, at your free option to provide, data in relation to your ethnicity, to enable Bridgestone in South Africa to comply with diversity enhancing statutory rules. 

If we have created a profile of you in our Talent Community, you will immediately upon creation of the profile receive an e-mail requesting to state your agreement, or to object to the creation of the profile and further enrichment of your data. Your profile will immediately be deleted upon receipt of your objection, or after three days when we have not received a response from you.    

When you spontaneously contact us indicating your interest in a career at Bridgestone

There may not be a vacancy available that matches your interest, but if your cv looks promising, we may decide to include you in our Talent Community database, to be able to consider you for a future job opportunity.

If we have created a profile of you, you will immediately upon creation of the profile receive an e-mail requesting to state your agreement, or to object to the creation of the profile and further enrichment of your data. Your profile will immediately be deleted upon receipt of your objection, or after three days when we have not received a response from you.

You are currently a Bridgestone employee

As Bridgestone employee you may be interested to apply for another position in our organisation. Alternatively, Bridgestone may contact you if it deems a job vacancy may suit you. Therefore, Bridgestone will duplicate certain data of your employment file to create your profile in the Talent Community.

You will immediately upon creation of the profile receive an e-mail requesting to state your agreement, or to object to the creation of the profile and further enrichment of your data. Your profile will immediately be deleted upon receipt of your objection, or after three days when we have not received a response from you.

You have by your own initiative subscribed in the Beamery application to Bridgestone’s Talent Community.

You will immediately upon creation of the profile receive an e-mail requesting to state your agreement, or to object to the creation of the profile and further enrichment of your data. Your profile will immediately be deleted upon receipt of your objection, or after three days when we have not received a response from you.

You came up in a search that Bridgestone carried out on online career sites, or you were referred to us by a third party.

We collect the data that you have published online and store the data in the Beamery database.  Upon creation of the profile, you will receive an e-mail requesting to state your agreement, or to object to the creation of the profile and further enrichment of your data. Your profile will immediately be deleted after three days when we have not received your confirmation.

Personal Data Enrichment

Our data processor Beamery provides personal data enrichment services to Bridgestone via a sub-processor, People Data Lab.

Data enrichment is a process used to enhance, validate, and update key categories of a candidate’s profile, to
ensure accuracy and completeness of the profile data. The Beamery service gives us the capability to enrich certain key categories of a candidate’s profile with data from other sources including publicly available sources.

Enrichment data ensures the information we are using to source, qualify, and
validate candidates is accurate and complete. When a candidate’s information is stored in our Talent Community database, either on our or the candidate’s initiative.

What sets of data are enriched?

  • Your location
  • Phone Number(s)
  • Email address
  • Education History
  • Work Experience and employment background- contains information in relation to previous jobs and employers (employment history)
  • Social / Website Links (e.g., LinkedIn) - contains the links found over the web by our Data Providers that relate to you. These can be social links, messaging services, links to personal websites, blogs, etc.

The data with which the profiles are enriched with data obtained from the publicly accessible social media and other public online sources.

The recruitment processes

Assessing a candidate for a job vacancy

Your decision whether to be a member of the Talent Community as explained above shall not affect your chances to be hired for a job at Bridgestone.  

Bridgestone collects information from you in several ways. For example, this information may be included in online application forms, CVs (resumes), cover letters or mails, or through interviews or other forms of assessment. Data that are shared in writing which Bridgestone deems not relevant for the recruitment process shall not be processed beyond the archiving of the original written instrument in which such data are contained.

Our recruitment process involves the matching of provided data with publicly available professional career-related information about you that you have published yourself on career-oriented social media, such as LinkedIn.

We also process personal data that we obtain from sources other than the candidate, in particular:

  • we may obtain data from external sources acting as data controllers in their own right (e.g., when receiving personal data from recruitment agencies or third-party referrals during the recruitment process).
  • for background screening, to verify content from a candidate’s CV (e.g., education, experience, accomplishments) relevant for our legitimate purpose.

Bridgestone shall inform the candidate from which external source the personal data originate, including, if applicable, whether such source is publicly accessible. 

Suggesting candidates using Artificial Intelligence. Our data processor Beamery uses Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) to help us source qualified, engaged candidates faster than can be achieved solely by human intervention. AI is a technique that allows machines to mimic human behavior, in this case a recruiter’s activity of suggesting suitable candidates among matching profiles, through automation, a technique of running a process without human intervention by applying the same rule to every input. However, the automation does not come in lieu of human intervention, but rather complements it. The suggestions are shown in a ranked list, with a score for how well the suggestions match the talent pool and the reasons for the match, so recruiters know why a candidate is a good fit. The AI is used for prospect prioritization, and not for automate-decision making such as adding candidates to vacancies directly.

Personal Interview. Bridgestone may invite you for a face-to-face or videoconferencing interview. Bridgestone shall process your replies to questions relevant to the offered vacancy to further assess your suitability for the vacancy, only in compliance with the applicable data protection laws.

Psychometric testing. We may subject candidates for specific vacancies to a psychometric test to measure candidates' suitability for the vacancy, based on the required personality characteristics and aptitude. The purpose of this testing is to identify the extent to which candidates' personality and cognitive abilities match those required to perform the role.

Job references. When you have provided us with references of previous employment, we reasonably assume that you expect us to contact the referenced contact person, as part of our legitimate interest to verify your credentials.

Medical examination. Some vacancies in our organization require that candidates are subjected to a medical examination prior to their hiring, for preventive or occupational medicine or for the assessment of the candidate’s working capacity, to be carried out and the resulting health data to be processed by Bridgestone occupational health professional who is bound by professional confidentiality.

Bridgestone shall not process data which are not relevant to our hiring the most suitable candidate for the vacancy.

Our purpose and lawful basis for the data processing

We have a legitimate interest to process your personal data for the following purposes:

  • To create a central databank of candidates, comprising the relevant recruitment data accessible for consultation by our recruiters across the Territory.
  • To get in touch with you and respond to your job application and, enquiries, to offer you a job by our own initiative.
  • To manage the recruitment process.
  • To assess your legal eligibility to work at as specific Bridgestone entity
  • To assess your skills and expertise and assess if you are the right candidate for a position, individually, and in comparison, with other candidates.
  • To run a background check on your claimed education, professional experience and any other information you have submitted to us.
  • To organise job interviews.
  • For management reporting.
  • To manage your access to the Talent Community.
  • To analyse, develop and improve our recruitment techniques and competitiveness in the employment market, using pseudonymised data.
  • To keep the recruitment data in your personnel file, should you be hired.
  • Ensure compliance with any procedures, laws and regulations which Bridgestone is subject to.

We will submit our creation and enrichment of your profile in the Talent Community to your agreement which we ask to confirm within 3 days from receiving the e-mail notification. We will delete the profile when you formally have objected to the creation of the profile, or if we have not received your response within three days from having sent you the e-mail notification.

When you wish to receive our recruitment newsletters or otherwise wish to be kept informed of job opportunities, applicable laws require that we obtain your prior consent. You are entirely free to give or refuse your consent. You can revoke any given your consent at any time, by sending us a message using the contact information below, or by clicking the unsubscribe link in any newsletter we have sent you.

Candidates may have to take a medical examination, including the processing of the candidate’s health data, based on a legal obligation imposed on Bridgestone to check candidate’s fitness for specific job functions or based on other criteria determined by law.   

What are the sources of the personal data?

The data are collected directly from you when you apply for a job, or when you expressed interest in a career or when you are an employee of Bridgestone.

We also collect data online from social media that you have published yourself.

Necessity of processing

Our processing of the personal data is needed to evaluate candidates for job vacancies and is therefore a requirement necessary to enter into an employment agreement with you.  The candidate controls the information shared with Bridgestone or published on career sites. Communicating or publishing personal data that are inaccurate or false may result in the candidate’s removal from the Talent Community, exclusion from any current or future recruitment activity, or disciplinary sanction under employment laws.

Who are the recipients of the personal data?

The candidate’s data are processed by the Human Resources staff responsible for recruitment and shared with members of the management team who may take part of the interview or subsequent interviews and/or recruiting decision process, and who may be based in other entities than those located in the territory.

Your personal data may be processed by travel agencies and associated travel providers, such as relevant hotels and transportation providers where travel or accommodation may be arranged for you by us to attend a face-to-face job interview.

Your personal data are shared with providers that act as our data processor (Beamery, SAP-SuccessFactors, Microsoft Azure cloud) and contracted recruiters.

How long do we keep your personal data?

Once we have stored your data in the Talent Community, we ask you to confirm your agreement and the accuracy of the data. If you object to the profile creation and data enrichment or you have not responded to our notification within three days, we will immediately remove the data from the Talent Community. However, the removed data may still be processed otherwise, when relevant to a recruitment activity.

If you are not hired for a job for which you applied, we will hold onto all your personal data for a period not exceeding 24 months. This retention period is needed to enable us to respond to possible candidate questions and claims. Your profile, should you have consented to the creation, will be maintained in the Talent Community in case other job opportunities come along that may interest you or which we may suggest to you. You have the possibility to manage your membership in the Talent Community yourself, or request the deletion of your data, using the contact information mentioned below.

To satisfy our duty of data minimisation under data protection laws, we will every two years ask you to confirm the accuracy of your data as stored in the Talent Community. If we have not received your confirmation within the deadline stated in our notification, we will remove your profile.

If you are hired, relevant recruitment data may be kept in your personnel file for as long the data are relevant to your employment with Bridgestone.

Where we store your personal data?

Where we store your personal data in our own systems, it is stored on the servers of our hosting service provider within the EEA.

The data that we collect from you are transferred and processed by staff of Bridgestone affiliated companies, recruitment agencies, and data processor operating outside the EEA. Such transfers are made based on the appropriate safeguards provided by a data transfer agreement incorporating the standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission You can verify the safeguards that are in place by requesting a copy from the Data Protection Lead via privacy@bridgestone.eu 

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information.  Details of these measures are available on request.

Data Security

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and treat the information confidentially and keep it secure.

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. In addition, we limit access to our personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know.  They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

Your rights

You have specific legal rights relating to the personal data we process relating to you. We will respect your individual rights and will deal with your requests adequately.

 The following list contains information on your legal rights which arise from applicable data protection laws:

  • Right to access: you may ask us information regarding personal data that we hold about you, including information as to which categories of personal data we have in our possession or control, what they are being used for, where we collected them, if not from you directly, and to whom they have been disclosed, if applicable. You may obtain one copy, free of charge, of personal data we hold about you.
  • Right to rectification: you may obtain from us rectification of personal data concerning you. We make reasonable efforts to keep personal data in our possession, accurate, complete, current and relevant, based on the most recent information available to us.
  • Right to restriction: you may obtain from us restriction of processing of your personal data, if
    • you contest the accuracy of your personal data for the period we need to verify the accuracy,
    • the processing is unlawful, and you request the restriction of processing rather than erasure of your personal data,
    • we do no longer need your personal data, but you require them for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, or if
    • you object to the processing while we verify whether our legitimate grounds override yours.
  • Right to portability: At your request, we will transfer your personal data to another controller, where technically feasible, provided that the processing is based on your consent or necessary for the performance of a contract. Rather than receiving a copy of your personal data you may request that we transfer the data to another controller, specified by you, directly.
  • Right to erasure: you may obtain from us erasure of your personal data, where:
    • the personal data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed.
    • You have a right to object further processing of your personal data (see below) and execute this right object to the processing.
    • the personal data have been unlawfully processed, unless the processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation which requires processing from us, in particular for statutory data retention requirements.
    • for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.
  • Right to object: you may object – at any time – to the processing of your personal data due to your particular situation, provided that the processing is based on our legitimate interests or those of a third party, or the processing concerns our archiving of your purchase history. In these events, we shall no longer process your personal data, however if you object to our processing for which we rely on our legitimate interest, we shall be allowed to continue the processing if we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds and an overriding interest for the processing or we further need the data for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims. If you object to the processing, please specify whether you wish the erasure of your personal data or the restriction of its processing by us.

We will fulfill your request within 30 days. However, the period may be extended due to specific reasons relating to the specific legal right or the complexity of your request.

In certain situations, we may not be able to give you access to all or some of your personal data due to statutory provisions. If we deny your request for access, we will advise you of the reason for the refusal.

File a complaint

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in the European Union (or European Economic Area) member state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred.

Contact

All questions, comments and requests regarding this Privacy Notice should be addressed to the Data Protection Organisation of Bridgestone at privacy@bridgestone.eu, or by sending a letter to the above-mentioned address.