1. Who we are
Wave Search is a trading name of Wave Search Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 09395205, with its registered office at Innovation House, Innovation Way, Discovery Park, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9FF, United Kingdom. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under registration number 00015357731.
We are the controller of the personal information described in this notice. If you have any questions about it, or want to exercise your rights, contact us at hello@wavesearch.co.uk or write to us at the address above.
2. Who this notice covers
- Candidates: people we place, approach about opportunities, or who register with us.
- Clients: contacts at organisations we work with or may work with.
- Referees and other people whose details are given to us during a search.
- Website visitors, including anyone who completes a form on our site.
3. The information we collect
Candidates
- Contact details such as your name, email address, phone number and location.
- Your CV, employment history, qualifications, skills and professional profile (for example LinkedIn).
- Current salary, benefits and expectations, notice period and preferred working model.
- Notes from our conversations and interviews, and feedback from clients.
- Reference details and, at offer stage, information needed to confirm your right to work.
- Diversity information, only if you choose to give it. We treat this as special category data and use it only with your explicit consent.
Clients
- Names, job titles and business contact details.
- Information about your hiring needs, including job descriptions and documents you send us.
- Records of our communications and the services we provide.
Website visitors
- Whatever you enter in our forms, together with any CV or job description you upload.
- Technical information such as your IP address and browser type, recorded by our hosting provider for security and to keep the site running.
4. Where we get it from
- Directly from you: through our forms, by email, by phone or in meetings.
- Publicly available professional sources, such as LinkedIn, company websites, industry publications and job boards.
- Our clients, referees and people who recommend you to us.
When we collect information about you from public sources rather than from you, we will tell you within a month, usually when we first contact you.
5. How we use it, and our lawful basis
- Finding and introducing suitable opportunities to candidates, and presenting shortlists to clients. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in providing recruitment services. We will always speak to you before we send your details to a client.
- Market mapping and talent intelligence, including identifying people with relevant experience for a search. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests. You can object at any time.
- Providing our services to clients and managing our relationship with them. Lawful basis: performing our contract, or taking steps at your request before entering into one.
- Responding to enquiries sent through our website or by email. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests in answering you.
- Meeting legal and regulatory obligations, including right-to-work checks and record keeping under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003. Lawful basis: legal obligation.
- Sending business updates and insights to client contacts. Lawful basis: our legitimate interests. Every message includes an easy way to opt out.
6. Artificial intelligence and WaveOS
We use WaveOS, our in-house talent intelligence platform, together with AI tools, to help us search, organise and match professional information more quickly. These tools support our consultants; they do not replace them.
We do not make decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on you based solely on automated processing. A member of our team always reviews and makes decisions about who to approach or put forward.
7. Who we share it with
- Clients, when you have agreed that we can put you forward for a role.
- Referees and, at offer stage, organisations that help with background or right-to-work checks.
- Service providers who support our business, including website hosting and form handling (Netlify), email and office software (Microsoft) and our candidate and client database TrackerRMS. They act only on our instructions.
- Professional advisers, such as lawyers and accountants.
- Regulators, law enforcement or courts, where the law requires it.
We never sell your personal information.
8. International transfers
Some of our service providers store or process information outside the UK, for example in the United States. Where they do, we rely on UK adequacy regulations or put in place appropriate safeguards, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
We also recruit for roles in Europe, the USA and the Middle East. With your agreement, we may share your details with a client based outside the UK as part of that process.
9. How long we keep it
- Candidates: for up to 12 months after our last meaningful contact with you, unless you ask us to keep your details on file for longer. After that we delete or anonymise them.
- Clients: for up to six years after our last engagement, to meet legal, tax and accounting requirements.
- Website enquiries that do not lead to an ongoing relationship: up to 12 months.
Form submissions are copied into our own systems and deleted from our website host periodically.
10. Keeping it secure
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information, including encrypted connections, access controls and limiting access to the people who need it. If a data breach is likely to put your rights at risk, we will tell you and the ICO as the law requires.
11. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you;
- have inaccurate information corrected;
- have your information deleted;
- restrict how we use it;
- object to us using it, including for direct marketing (an objection to marketing will always be upheld);
- receive a copy in a portable format;
- withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent;
- not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that significantly affect you.
To use any of these rights, email hello@wavesearch.co.uk. There is no charge, and we will respond within one month.
12. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please contact us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
13. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time. The latest version will always be on this page, with the date it was last updated. See also our cookie policy and website terms.