Online recruitment services - are they safe?
(Submitted by AGCAS member)
Jo Davies, Information Manager at the University of Swansea, has a number of concerns to do with the privacy of online recruitment websites. She would like to hear the views of AGCAS members - and anyone in the industry.
Lately, I have received a number of requests from online recruitment services to put links from our website to theirs, understandably wanting to boost their Google page rank. Whenever I receive such a request, the first thing I do is have a look at their privacy policy to find out how they handle users' information and to get an idea of the security measures they have in place. I must admit, I sometimes find privacy policies and terms of use difficult to get to grips with because they often tend to be written in legal jargon, and I think some clarification in layman's terms should be provided.
Not infrequently, I find these policies say things that raise a number of questions, for example:
• Users' information is likely to be stored on servers outside the UK, possibly in countries outside the EU. Does this mean that their personal information may not be covered by UK Data Protection legislation?
• No online service and its databases can be completely proof against attack, and users need to accept that, whilst the organisation does its best to ensure the best level of security that it can, there is always an element of risk in using any internet service. From various discussions with our Administrative Computing Unit, who manage our student records, I know that they would not accept a level of security that is anything less than 100% water-tight when it comes to verifying and transferring information on students.
• If a given online service is sold to another business, then all information becomes the property of the buyer.
• Anonymised, aggregated information on users may be passed to other parties. I cannot help but wonder whether this is being used to provide graduate labour market information to corporate clients.
Am I being unduly cautious? Obviously, we want to signpost as many job hunting options to our students as we can, particularly in this time of recession. However, if we signpost something on our website then I think we are, in some sense, recommending it despite whatever disclaimers we may publish.
If you are an AGCAS Associate or Affiliate member and signed into this site, you can leave a comment below. Only other AGCAS members signed into this site will be able to read your comments.
If items are locked please check that you are registered and signed in to ensure that you can see all parts of the site to which you have been given access.