Skip to main content
Placeholder image

Privacy Policy

About this privacy policy

This is the privacy policy for applicants to roles with the Guardian News & Media Limited (collectively referred to as “Guardian”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this policy). This policy explains how we collect, use, share and transfer your personal data which you provide as part of your job application on the Guardian “Work with us” site at https://workwithus.theguardian.com/ (“our site”).

This privacy policy is separate to how we use personal data collected via theguardian.com website. For information on how personal data is used on theguardian.com website, please read the privacy policy here and the cookie policy here.

This policy also incorporates data privacy rights granted to individuals under Australian privacy law.

For additional information for US residents, please refer to our US Privacy Policy addendum here.

Contents

  1. Who we are
  2. What personal data we collect about you
  3. How we collect personal data about you
  4. Why and how we use your personal data
  5. How we share your personal data
  6. International data transfers
  7. How long we keep your personal data
  8. Security of your personal data
  9. Cookies and similar technologies
  10. Your privacy and data protection rights
  11. Your Australian privacy rights
  12. Contact us


1. Who we are

Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU is the data controller in respect of personal data that we collect from you. This means that we are responsible for our use of your personal data. If you want to contact us directly, you can find our contact details in the “Contact us” section below.

Our values guide everything that we do, including our editorial approach and how we use personal data. We are strongly committed to keeping your personal data safe. This commitment exists throughout the lifecycle of your personal data, from the design of any Guardian service which uses personal data to the deletion of that data.

2. What personal data we collect about you

We collect your personal data when you sign up for our services and when you browse our site.

Personal data is any information which can identify you directly, or indirectly, for example when combined. Personal data can include your name, email address or phone number. It can also be information such as your IP address, or how you interact with our sites and services.

When we refer to “personal data” in this policy, we are also referencing “personal information,” as it is defined under US State Privacy Laws, and as it is defined under Australian law. Data that has been deidentified or that otherwise cannot reasonably be related back to a specific person is not considered personal data.

The personal data we collect when you use our site’s basic functions or register for a candidate profile account on our site

When you register for a candidate profile account on our site, we may collect:

  • Identification data, such as name, title, citizenship, passport, drivers' licence information and tax reference.
  • Personal information, such as your date and place of birth, emergency contact details and gender.
  • Contact details, such as your home address, telephone number and email address.
  • Education and work experience, such as contact details for your current/former employer, information about your educational background, your work experience and other experience.
  • Other application data, such as information included in your application form/CV, such as personal interests or social media handles, information about the jobs that you had searched for or looked at on our pages and jobs for which you had submitted an application.
  • Information collected as part of the interview process, such as notes taken from your interview or information provided from recruitment agencies.
  • Background check information, such as information obtained through reference checks and confirmation about your work/educational background.

When you register on our site, you have access to a profile page where you have the option to change and update your personal data.

We may also collect, store and use the following special categories of personal data:

  • Health and medical data, such as information on disability for purposes of accommodating your application and interview and compliance with legal obligations.
  • Criminal records data, in the event we conduct or receive the results of criminal records background checks in relation to you in the process of your application, where relevant and appropriate to the role that you are applying for.
  • Diversity monitoring data, such as information about your race or ethnicity and religious beliefs.

Any diversity monitoring data provided will only be used for statistical purposes and will not affect the success of your application.

Personal data we generate about you

When you register for a Guardian account, we assign you a unique ID number. We use this to manage your preferences, for example, the newsletters you have subscribed to. We use your unique ID to recognise you when you are signed in to our services.

When you use our sites we may also use cookies or similar technologies to collect extra data, including:

  • Information on how you interact with our services.
  • Geolocation data based on your IP address, from which we will infer the country, region or city where you are based.
  • Your browsing history of the content you have visited on our sites, including how you were referred to our sites via other websites.
  • Identifiers derived from those cookies or similar technologies, your device, or generated based on the personal data you share when registering, signing up for newsletters or making a payment, such as your email address, or the data described above.

Children’s personal data

We do not aim any of our products or services directly at children under the age of 18 and we do not knowingly collect personal data about children under 13 in providing our services. Some of our services may have a higher age restriction and this will be shown at the point of registration.

3. How we collect personal data about you

We collect your personal data in the following ways:

  • Directly from you, when you apply for a position, contact us, and when you browse our site.
  • From third parties, e.g. personal data that helps us to combat fraud or which we collect, with your permission, when you interact with us through your social media accounts.

We collect personal data when you:

  • Register as a user (name, email address and password).
  • Create a profile (country of residence, job sector and salary expectations) and upload documents (for example, your CV or cover letter).
  • Sign up for marketing communications.
  • Access and interact with our site.
  • Test our products, participate in focus groups or provide us with feedback.

We also collect personal data through cookies and other similar technologies. Please refer to our cookie section below for more details on how we use cookies.

Personal data that we receive about you from recruitment agencies

For some positions in our organisation, we may require particular skills and engage executive search firms to manage part of the process on our behalf. We may receive your CV in relation to a position where we have invited our partner agencies to present candidates.

4. Why and how we use your personal data

We use personal data collected through our site only when we have a valid reason and the legal grounds to do so. We determine the legal grounds based on the purposes for which we have collected your personal data.

The legal ground may be one of the following:

  • Consent: We will use your personal data where we have asked for your consent, which you can withdraw at any time. For example, we will rely on consent to place non-essential cookies and similar technologies on our sites.
  • Performance of a contract with you (or in order to take steps prior to entering into a contract with you): We will use your personal data if we need to in order to perform a contract with you. For example, to process your application where you have applied to a vacancy.
  • Compliance with law: In some cases, we may have a legal obligation to use or keep your personal data, for example to disclose salary details to HMRC.
  • Our legitimate interests: We may process your personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests in a way that might be expected as part of running the Guardian and in a way which does not materially impact your rights and freedoms. We rely on legitimate interests:
    • To send service and/or direct marketing communications to you, unless you have opted out
    • To test changes to our site we may vary the personal data that is collected and how it is used.
    • To backup our systems and databases.
    • For internal administrative purposes related to our services, such as our accounting and records.
    • To respond to your queries and to resolve complaints.
    • To troubleshoot technical issues on our sites and their functionalities.
    • For security and fraud prevention, and to ensure that our sites are safe and secure and used in line with our terms of use.
    • To contact you directly via email if you contact us.

How we may also contact you

Service communications

From time to time we will send you service emails and in line with your communication preferences, T&C changes, or to inform you when we receive your application.

Updating your personal data

Once an account has been created with the recruitment system you will be able to change certain data about yourself when you are logged in such as updating contact details and submitting additional documents or removing existing documents in your application.

5. How we share your personal data

Within the Guardian group of companies

Depending on where you live, we may share your personal data within the Guardian group of companies in the UK, US, or Australia. We may share it in order to perform a contract with you, for administrative purposes, or when we have a legitimate interest in doing so.

For example, sometimes we may receive a letter, email or another form of communication from you that we consider to be significant to the history of the Guardian. We may decide to share this with the Guardian Archive run by the Guardian Foundation for historic and archiving purposes.

With external organisations

We share your personal data with other organisations that are not directly linked to us under the following circumstances:

Service providers - We may share your data with other organisations that provide services on our behalf. We may do this to perform a contract we have entered into with you, where it is in our legitimate interests or with your consent. Examples of when we may share your data with service providers include sharing with:

  • Website hosting providers, such as ThirtyThree and Oracle.
  • Fraud management providers that help us to identify and prevent online fraud.
  • Service providers that help provide us with insights and analytics that help us improve our products and services. For example, we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors engage with our site. If you don’t want Google Analytics to be used in your browser, you can install the ‘Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On’, provided by Google.
  • In the event a candidate is offered a role, our third party pre-screening companies, such as TrustID, HireRight and Health Partners.

Agencies and authorities if required by law - We may reveal your personal data to any law enforcement agency, court, regulator, government authority, or in connection with any legal action if we are required to do so to meet a legal or regulatory obligation, where the request is proportionate, or otherwise to protect our rights or the rights of anyone else (for example, in response to a valid and properly served legal process such as subpoena or warrant). If we have your contact details, we will take reasonable steps to attempt to notify you prior to disclosing your data unless (i) prohibited by applicable law from doing so, or (ii) there are clear indications of unlawful conduct in connection with your use of Guardian services.

Organisation/s that buy any of the Guardian group companies - We may share your personal data to any other organisation that buys, or to which we transfer all, or substantially all, of our assets and business. If this sale or transfer takes place, we will use reasonable efforts to try to make sure that the organisation we transfer your personal data to uses it in line with our privacy policy.

When we share your personal data, as specified above, with any organisation which accesses your data in the course of providing services on our behalf, they will be governed by strict contractual restrictions to make sure that they protect your data and comply with applicable law. We may also independently audit these service providers to make sure that they meet our standards.

US residents

Certain transfers of personal data to third parties may constitute a “sale” of your personal information under US State Privacy Laws. For more information about how to exercise your right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information or the sharing of your personal information for personalised advertising, please see our Privacy Policy US addendum.

6. International data transfers

Personal data we collect may be transferred to, stored and processed in any country or territory where one or more of our Guardian group companies or service providers are based or have facilities. While other countries or territories may not have the same standards of data protection as those in your home country, we will continue to protect personal data that we transfer in line with this privacy policy.

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA), we ensure similar protection and put in place at least one of these safeguards:

  • We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been found to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
  • We may also use specific approved contracts that use Standard Contractual Clauses for the protection of personal data where appropriate, with our service providers that are based in countries outside the UK or the EEA, including those based in the US and Australia. These contracts give your personal data the same protection it has in the UK or the EEA.

If you are located in the UK or the EEA, you may contact us for a copy of the safeguards which we have put in place for the transfer of your personal data outside the UK or the EEA.

7. How long we keep your personal data

We keep your personal data for only as long as we need to. How long we need your personal data depends on what we are using it for, as set out in this privacy policy. For example, we may need to use it to answer your queries about a product or service and as a result may keep your personal data while you are still using our product or service. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means. We may also need to keep your personal data for accounting purposes, for example, where you have bought a subscription.

If we no longer need your data, we will delete it or make it anonymous by removing all details that identify you. If we have asked for your permission to process your personal data and we have no other lawful grounds to continue with that processing, and you withdraw your permission, we will delete your personal data. However, when you unsubscribe from marketing communications, we will keep your email address to ensure that we do not send you any marketing communications in the future.

8. Security of your personal data

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational controls to protect your personal data against unauthorised processing and against accidental loss, damage or destruction.

When you complete a job application, you are responsible for choosing a secure password. You should keep this password confidential and you should choose a password that you do not use on any other site. You should not share your password with anyone else, including anyone who works for us. Sending any information, including personal data, via the internet is not completely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of any personal data sent to our site while still in transit and so you provide it at your own risk.

9. Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small file that can be placed on your device. It is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard drive, tablet or mobile device. When you visit our site, it can allow us to recognize and remember you.

We use cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our site, including:

  • Understanding how you use our site, for instance how long you stay on a page or which report you read next.
  • Delivering content to you.
  • Monitoring how users interact with pages on our site to identify and remedy interface issues.

We use the following types of cookies on our sites:

  • Strictly Necessary – These cookies are essential for the operation of our site. If you set your browser to block these cookies, some parts of our site will not work. In particular, we won’t be able to save your preferences about cookies.
  • Performance – These cookies are used to measure how often you visit our site and how you use our site. We use this information to get a better sense of how our users engage with our site and projects and to improve our site so that you have a better experience. For example, we collect information about which of our pages are most frequently visited, and by which types of users.
  • Functionality – These cookies are used to recognize you and remember your preferences or settings when you return to our site so that we can provide a more personalized experience for you.

It is possible to stop your browser from accepting cookies altogether by changing your browser’s cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the “options” or “preferences” menu of your browser. Please note that searching in incognito mode or regularly clearing your cookies may impact your choice cookie settings.

10. Your privacy and data protection rights

You have a number of rights with regard to the personal data that we hold about you and you can contact us with regard to the following rights in relation to your personal data:

  • You have the right to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
  • You have the right to correct the personal data we hold about you.
  • Where applicable, you may also have a right to receive a machine-readable copy of your personal data.
  • You also have the right to ask us to delete your personal data or restrict how it is used. There may be exceptions to the right to erasure for specific legal reasons which, if applicable, we will set out for you in response to your request.
  • Where applicable, you have the right to object to processing of your personal data for certain purposes.
  • Where you have provided us with consent to use your personal data, you can withdraw this consent at any time.

If you would like to exercise any of your rights specified above, please email dataprotection@theguardian.com or write to the Data Protection Officer at Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. We will respond to all standard legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a large number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

We may need verification of your identity to proceed with a request. If you provide us with proof of identity containing information that does not match our records, we may request further proof of identity from you. This is a security measure to ensure that your personal data is not disclosed to any person who does not have a right to receive it.

You will not have to pay a fee to obtain a copy of your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, for any further copies requested by you, we may charge a reasonable fee based on administrative costs.

11. Your Australian privacy rights

The Australian Privacy Act has rules around how we handle your personal information that may be different to rules in other regions. These rules are set out in the Australian Privacy Principles in force under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (the Australian Privacy Act). We are required to treat your personal information in line with those principles, including to disclose to you what personal information we collect and how we use it, to store your information securely and to support you in exercising your rights.

Personal information we collect and use

When we refer to “personal data” throughout this policy, we are also referencing “personal information,” as it is defined under Australian law.

Details about the personal information that we collect, use and disclose is set out throughout this privacy policy. You can navigate these relevant sections by going to the contents section at the top of the page.

Your rights

Your rights to privacy are also protected by the Australian Privacy Act, including your:

  • Right of access to the personal information held about you.
  • Right of correction to correct your information when it is incorrect.

These principles and rights are reflected throughout this privacy policy.

Opt out of personalised advertising

Under the Australian Privacy Act, you have the right to opt out of the use of your personal information for the purpose of direct marketing, including in relation to personalised advertising. You can opt out of personalised advertising across our website and apps at any time by going to the “consent preferences” link on our sites in the footer of every page. You will still see non-personalised advertising.

We and our partners use cookies and similar technologies to collect information about your use of our site to help create reports and statistics on the performance of our site. Analytics cookies such as Google Analytics collect information such as your IP address, device type and operating system, referring URLs, location and pages visited. If you don’t want Google Analytics to be used in your browser, you can install the ‘Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On’, provided by Google.

For a complete description of our use of cookies and similar technologies globally, please see our cookie policy.

If you have contacted us at dataprotection@theguardian.com with a privacy related complaint and you are not satisfied with our handling of that complaint, you may refer that complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner:

GPO BOX 5218, Sydney NSW 2001

1300 363 992

https://www.oaic.gov.au/

12. Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal data, please contact the Data Protection Team, by email at dataprotection@theguardian.com; or by post at:

Guardian News & Media Limited

Kings Place, 90 York Way

London N1 9GU

Data protection complaints will be acknowledged within 30 days, investigated without undue delay and a response provided by the Data Protection Team.

If you are not satisfied with the way your concern has been handled, you can refer your complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If you have a question about anything else, please see our Contact us page here.

For individuals based in the European Union:

We do not have an establishment in the European Union. We have appointed an EU based representative to serve as a direct contact for data protection authorities and individuals on our behalf, who can be contacted at theguardian@mcf.ie or MCF Legal Technology Solutions Limited, Riverside One, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Changes to this privacy policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, the updated privacy policy will be posted on this page. If the changes are significant, we may also choose to email all our registered users with the new details. If required by law, we will get your permission or give you the opportunity to opt out of any new uses of your data.

The most recent changes to this privacy policy were made on:

  • August 2026
  • July 2024

A list of all previous changes are available upon request.