1. WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

We will collect personal data directly from you when you express interest in us as a potential employer (e.g., by registering to attend a recruitment event) or apply to work with us.  We may also collect personal data about you indirectly, where you have made it publicly available on external sources such as LinkedIn or job boards.  We collect, store and use your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you as per your request and, if applicable, consider and process your application, including as described in the “How We Will Use Your Information” section below. The personal data we collect from you differs depending on the country where the job is based and the stage of the recruitment process. We collectively refer to this type of information as “Candidate Information.” This includes:

• Prospective Candidates: If you express interest in us as a potential employer and want us to keep in touch with you and notify you of potential roles, you may provide us with personal data such as your name, contact details, location, areas of interest and resume/CV.
• Application information: When you apply for a role through our recruitment platform, we offer ways for you to import your resume/CV, and we also ask some screening questions. The personal data we collect this way may include, for example, your name, telephone number, personal email address, education history, work history, qualifications, cover letter, transcripts, portfolio/work samples, work authorization, compensation expectation, any other information that you choose to provide, and roles that you have applied to.  This may also include information from publicly available sources, such as your LinkedIn profile or personal website that we believe is relevant to your application.   
• Interview information: Any personal data that you provide to us during or in connection with the interview process, including (if applicable) assessment results and recordings of video interviews.
• Surveys: Any personal data that you provide to us through optional feedback surveys.
• Background checks: Background screening results. For certain roles, this may include screening of publicly available social media profiles.
• Internet or electronic network activity information: such as information regarding your interactions with our careers stie and other information collected via cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies (e.g., browser information, device information, IP address, the date, time, length of stay, and specific pages accessed during your visits to our careers site);
• References: Current and previous employer and/or personal references.  You are responsible for obtaining consent from any person whose personal information you share with Versant.
• Audio or visual information: such as video recordings you submit with your application or CCTV from our offices obtained via in-person interviews or site visits for security and loss prevention purposes.

Your decision to apply for a position and provide your personal data to us is voluntary.  We will tell you if information is required to move forward with your application. If you fail to provide the information designated as mandatory, we will not be able to process your application.

For roles in some countries (e.g. US and UK), we may also collect, store and use the following types of sensitive personal data where permitted by law and on a voluntary basis that may be subject to heightened protection under certain laws such as:

• Race/Ethnicity
• Sexual Orientation
• Veteran status
• Disability

We will explain at the time of collection why we need to collect this kind of information, whether it is mandatory, and we will also seek your consent if this is required by law.  We do not “sell,” “share,” or process your sensitive Candidate Information for “targeted advertising” as those terms are defined by applicable laws. 

In some cases, we may need to collect information about candidates’ criminal history (if any). If this is the case, we will do this in accordance with applicable legal requirements, after the candidate has been offered and has accepted the role.

These lists are not exhaustive and may be changed and/or added to from time to time.

In connection with a merger, acquisition, divestiture, or business spin-off, Versant may receive certain Candidate Information about you from the relevant company (e.g. NBCUniversal or its relevant affiliate) as necessary to ensure continuity.

2. HOW WILL WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?

We use Candidate Information to evaluate a potential employment relationship with you and for other business purposes, such as managing our business, keeping our systems secure, and complying with legal obligations. Such uses include:

2.1      In certain jurisdictions, on the basis that it is necessary for our legitimate interests as listed below, where not overridden by your data protection rights under applicable law:

• Receiving, reviewing, managing and administering job applications. As part of our recruitment process, we may use automated systems and AI tools where permitted by law to assist in tasks such as reviewing resumes, screening and ranking applications with tools such as keyword matching to identify the skills, qualifications, and experience of applicants that are the most suitable for the relevant position.  While this is necessary to enable our recruitment team to identify qualified candidates more efficiently, no hiring decision is made solely by an automated system. All decisions are reviewed and confirmed by a human recruiter or hiring manager.
• Processing your application, including assessing your skills, qualifications and suitability for the role so that we can decide whether to take your application further or invite you to apply for other roles either at the time or in the future.
• Conductingbackground and reference checks to validate your qualifications and experience and assess your suitability for the role, where applicable.
• Communicating with you about the recruitment process.
• Improving our application process, to ensure that our application process is as user-friendly and effective as possible. This might include collecting personal data from you through voluntary surveys. Your choices in relation to surveys have no bearing on the selection process for any vacancy at Versant.
• Keeping recordsrelating to our recruitment processes.
• Data analytics and reportingto help us visualize and monitor the effectiveness of our recruitment processes, identify trends, improve our processes and allocate our resources effectively.
• Protecting our legitimate business interests and legal rights, and legal compliance, including use in connection with legal claims (including disclosure of such information in connection with legal process or litigation), compliance, regulatory, auditing, investigative, fraud prevention and reporting purposes.
• As necessary and appropriate to provide reasonable accommodations for the application and interview process; and
• To enable solely internal uses in a lawful manner that are reasonably aligned with your expectations based on our interactions with you and that are compatible with the context in which the information was provided to us.

2.2 Where you have provided your consent, including:

• If you are a prospective candidate (including if you have joined our Talent Community by checking the box on our recruitment platform to indicate that you would like to join our communities for future career opportunities), retaining your data in order to review your skills, experience and interests and to assess your suitability for, and notify you of, roles that might be of interest to you. You can ask us to delete your personal data and unsubscribe from the Talent Community at any time.
• Collecting demographic data (if applicable) to help us to inform our recruiting strategies and undertake appropriate actions and initiatives. By choosing to provide us with this data, you consent to this processing.

2.3      Where necessary for us to administer any future contract of employment with you, if applicable.

2.4      Where necessary to comply with a legal obligation, such as confirming that you are eligible to work under applicable immigration laws.

If you fail to provide personal data when requested, and that data is necessary for us to consider your application (e.g. evidence of qualifications or work history), your application will be discontinued.

How we use your sensitive personal data

To the extent collected through the application form, we will use personal data that you provide about your race, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, other protected characteristics (as defined by law), and any other sensitive personal data to comply with our legal obligations and any other purposes for which you provide your consent.  Such sensitive personal data may be aggregated with other data to generate workforce statistics. 

Submission of this sensitive personal data is optional and there will be no negative consequences if you choose not to provide this data.  Any such personal data provided by you will not be made available to any decision-maker in the recruitment process, will not be used to consider your suitability for the role, and will not be provided to your manager(s) in the event that you are successful with your application.  By choosing to provide us with this data, you consent to this processing.  

If you have voluntarily provided us with disability or health information so that we can make adjustments to our recruitment process, we will use this to support you during your application. If we hire you, information we collect in connection with your application will become part of your employment record and be used during the onboarding process and for other employment-related purposes in accordance with our internal personnel privacy policy.

3. WHO COULD MY INFORMATION BE DISCLOSED TO?

• Within Versant:Candidate Information will be shared with people within Versant who have a “need to know” the information in connection with the recruitment and hiring process. Versant Media, LLC has its headquarters in the US and operates on a global basis, so it may be that the hiring manager and other people involved in the recruitment process will be located in a country outside your country of residence, or in a different group company to the one that is hiring for the role. We also share Candidate Information with personnel within Versant group functions that manage and support the recruitment and hiring process, such as Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, HR Operations, Finance and Legal.  In order to consider your application, we may therefore process and transfer your personal data within the Versant group of companies.
• Service Providers:Versant uses third party service providers to assist with the recruitment process, including the collection, processing and validation of Candidate Information. For example, our recruitment platform is hosted and provided by a third-party provider. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your identifiable data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process it for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions, and they are required to keep it confidential.  Third-party providers may, on a case-by-case basis and subject to Versant approval, use anonymized or aggregated data for legitimate business purposes such as to improve the performance, security, or functionality of their systems; develop analytics or benchmarks that do not identify individual users or employers; or meet applicable legal, regulatory, or audit requirements. Versant does not authorize third parties to use candidate information for advertising, profiling, or unrelated commercial purposes.  
• Professional Advisors: We disclose information about you to our professional advisors, including accountants, auditors, lawyers, insurers, and bankers if needed. We only permit these advisors to process your personal data for specified purposes and as appropriate, in accordance with our instructions and the provisions of this Policy and applicable law.
• International Transfer:In the scenarios mentioned above, your personal data may be transferred outside your country of residence for processing, including to countries whose laws are not regarded as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data under your local legislation. Such transfer and processing is subject to local law and, where required, will be subject to your consent. When making international transfers out of the UK or the European Economic Area, we use standard contractual data protection clauses that have been approved by the relevant authorities.

Regardless of where they are located, our service providers and group companies are required to take appropriate security measures to protect Candidate Information in line with our privacy and data security standards. For more information on security measures, please see below.

• Other third parties:Generally, Versant will only disclose Candidate Information to third parties other than service providers with your consent; when required to do so by law, regulation, or legal process; in response to a legitimate request for assistance by the police or other law enforcement agency;  to detect, prevent or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect against harm to the rights, property, or safety of Versant, our users, applicants, candidates, employees or the public. Versant may also share personal data listed above in aggregated form, including with regulators and industry bodies for equal opportunities monitoring and reporting purposes.

We may also disclose aggregated or de-identified information, which cannot reasonably be used to identify you. Versant processes, maintains, and uses this information only in a de-identified fashion and will not attempt to re-identify such information except as permitted by law.

4. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION AND HOW DO WE PROTECT IT?

4.1 Retention

If your application for employment is unsuccessful (or you withdraw from the process or decline our offer), we will keep your personal data for as long as we need to fulfill our legitimate interests, to process your application and any following employment contract or to meet legal requirements, resolve disputes, unless a longer retention period is required or allowed under applicable law. After this we will take steps to delete your personal data or hold it in a form that no longer identifies you in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

We may also maintain your information on file, upon your request, for a limited period to consider you for other suitable positions within Versant and its affiliates.  If you prefer that we do not contact you regarding future employment opportunities, you may indicate this preference by selecting the applicable option on the application form. Please note that declining further contact will not affect your eligibility for the position to which you originally applied, nor will it impact our ability to process your current application or comply with legal and recordkeeping obligations.

If your application for employment is successful, personal data collected during the recruitment process will be retained during your employment in accordance with our internal personnel privacy policy and retention policies.  

4.2 Security

We maintain procedural, technical, and physical safeguards to help protect against the loss, misuse or unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of Candidate Information. These safeguards vary depending upon the sensitivity of the personal data we collect and store. Please be aware that no security solutions are infallible.

5. YOUR RIGHTS

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to make certain requests regarding your personal data.  For example, if you are applying for a role in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area (EEA), you may request: 

• Access to the Candidate Information that Versant holds about you;
• Correction of Candidate Information. This enables you to ask us to correct incomplete or inaccurate personal data we hold about you;
• Deletion of Candidate Information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data from our records;
• Objection to processing of Candidate Information. This enables you to object to or restrict certain types of processing that we are carrying out;
• Restriction of processing of Candidate Information. This enables you to ask us to restrict our use or disclosure of Candidate Information in certain cases;
• Withdrawal of consent. Where we have asked for your consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time; or
• to be provided with certain Candidate Information in machine-readable format and to request that we transfer this to another organization.

If you are a California resident, you or your authorized agent have the right to make a request to access, correct, or delete your Candidate Information.  You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising your rights.  California law places certain obligations on businesses that “sell” personal data to third parties or “share” personal data with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not “sell” or “share” the personal data covered by this policy and have not done so in the twelve months prior to the effective date of this policy.

In certain instances, applicable local laws may allow us legitimately and properly to refuse some of these requests; for instance, to comply with applicable legal obligations, to protect the legitimate rights of third parties or to preserve the confidentiality of management deliberations.

If you (or in California, your authorized agent) would like to exercise any of your data rights, or if you have a concern about how we have used your personal data, please send an email to [email protected].  We will respond to your questions within the timeframe required under applicable data protection laws.

We also will take reasonable steps to verify your identity (and, if applicable, your agent’s authorization) before responding to a request. In doing so, we may ask you for verification information so that we can match at least two verification points with information we maintain in our files about you. If we are unable to verify you through this method, we shall have the right, but not the obligation, to request additional information from you. Where local law provides, you may have the right to make a complaint at any time to a data protection authority or regulator about our collection and use of your personal data. However, before doing so, we would encourage you to first contact us directly to allow us an opportunity to resolve any concerns you may have.

Rights related to Automated Decision-Making and Profiling: If a decision significantly affecting you were to be based solely on automated processing (which, as stated, is not our practice for final hiring decisions), in some jurisdictions you would have the right to request an explanation of how the tools work, what they mean for you, and have a person (not just an AI system) review certain decisions, express your point of view and contest the decision. 

6. DATA CONTROLLER AND CONTACT DETAILS

If you are a candidate who has expressed an interest in, or is applying for, a role based outside the United States and Canada, the data controller for your personal data is the Versant affiliate that you have expressed interest in, or to which you have submitted an application.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your personal data, please contact us using the contact details below:

For all queries: [email protected]

The Data Protection Officer for Albatros Datenservice GmbH is Fieldfisher. If you wish to contact the DPO, please email [email protected] and include the text “For the German DPO” in the header.

Postal enquiries
You can also write to us at the address below:

Chief Privacy Officer
Versant Legal Department
904 Sylvan Avenue
Englewood Cliffs
New Jersey 07632
USA