Recruitment Question & privacy laws

Angie,

Did you get your answer... Would be curious to know from the pure legal sense.

Based on what I know and would interpret from employment and privacy law (in Canada), an application into your company, even for a specific role, would be subject to your evaluation against that role. I would imagine that if you evaluate as being qualified for a more senior or different role (within the same company) that this would not be a violation of privacy legislation. However, I have seen most companies ensure this is covered off legally through statements on their ATS app pages talking about appropriate use of the resume, keeping it in the database for future opportunities, etc. With EEO on the US side of things, there may be more concerns from a reporting perspective than purely privacy legislation.

Finally, you would obviously want to consider transparency to and communication with the candidate. Nothing wrong with picking up the phone before sending off to another hiring manager and saying "hi, I'm calling from ABC org, we received your resume for position 1, but think you would be best suited to position 2 - may we consider you for position 2, and I will send you a job spec". Odds are, you'll set yourself apart from a lot of other companies by being this proactive and may also get yourself some good word of mouth (viral) PR from the candidate - even more so if you make the hire!

I have even done the above in rare occasions and (with advance and written permission) either put the person in touch with recruiters I know at other companies or put those companies in touch with a candidate - where I know it was a quality candidate but did not have a suitable role.

Happy recruiting.

Geoff Ramey | Vizible Corporation | Director, Human Resources | Email : gramey@vizible.com | Yahoo! IM : geofframey