Privacy notice

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This Privacy Notice was last updated: 16 December 2024

This Privacy Notice describes how Robert Half Hong Kong Limited ("we", “us”, “our” or “Robert Half”) may use, store and disclose or handle in any way Personal Information that we may collect about individuals.

We may modify this Privacy Notice from time to time. If we do, we will post the updated Privacy Notice on our website www.roberthalf.com.hk (the “website”).

This Privacy Notice should be read in conjunction with any privacy or collection statement we provide to you.

In this Privacy Notice, "Personal Information" refers to an information or an opinion about an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information is true or not or is recorded in a material form or not. Please note that we might aggregate Personal Information from different sources (website, offline event). As part of this, we combine Personal Information that were originally collected by our international group of companies operating globally.

We will collect your Personal Information directly from you and from other sources including when you apply for a job via a job board, directly through our website, from Social Media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and X or when you provide us with your details during a job fair, promotional, networking or training event. We will use your Personal Information to provide you with work finding services.

When you ask us to provide you with work finding services, we will ask you to register as a Candidate. During our Candidate Registration process, we will collect your Personal Information directly from you, your CV, from employment referees and via online tests you may perform at our request.

We may, with your consent, disclose your Personal Information to our clients for relevant job vacancies. Our clients may request additional Personal Information about you in relation to their job vacancies and requirements to assess your suitability for the position.

Your Personal Information will be securely stored in our systems.

The categories of Personal Information we may collect include:

your identity (your full name, previous names, evidence of change of name, gender, date of birth and marital status.).

evidence of your right to work in Hong Kong which may include a photograph, nationality, place of birth, proof of identity, evidence of immigration status, etc (in accordance with the Immigration Department requirements).

contact details including your email, home address and phone numbers so that we can contact you by email and text message or deliver equipment necessary for your employment with us.

bank account and Hong Kong Identity Card number (so we can make payments to you and account for tax if you are working as a temporary worker supplied through Robert Half).

superannuation details.

your job search criteria, preferences and expectations.

your qualifications, skills, experience and training.

current and desired remuneration/payrate and other benefits.

educational history.

employment history.

references.

other information that you, your referees or our clients provide to us, including personal feedback and notes of our interactions with you and/or others in relation to your suitability for work with us or through us.

aptitude and psychological assessment results.

the results of background checks.

medical certificates for human resource (HR) management, if you are working as a temporary worker supplied through Robert Half.other information contained in your CV or that you choose to provide to us.

technical data including internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website. For the purposes stated in “How we use your Personal Information”, we may combine this technical data with your Personal Information, and the Informative Data defined in the ‘Cookies and Informative Data’ section below held by us or our group companies. We may also receive technical data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see the ‘Cookie’ section below for further details.

profile data including your username and password, your interests, preferences, feedback and customer survey responses.

usage data including information about how you use our website and services.

marketing and communications data including your marketing and communication preferences.

To provide you with work finding services, we will send you job alert emails matching your job search criteria and preferences. From time to time you may also receive job alerts or event invitations which we consider you may find interesting.

You can stop receiving these job alerts or event invitations at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link contained in the job alert email.

If you are applying for a role as our employee, we will collect Personal Information from you via your CV, referees, professional and educational organisations and other sources. We will process your Personal Information for the purposes of administering the application, managing the internal hiring process and assessing your suitability. We will store your Personal Information securely in our confidential online HR database. Your Personal Information cannot be viewed or accessed by anyone except for members of HR, Talent Acquisition and Protiviti Managed Business Solutions in Hong Kong, Australia, the UK, Europe and the US and other staff if they are connected to the hiring process, such as interviewing, assessing your suitability for the role you have applied for and communicating with you. Except for the above, we do not share our HR database with any group companies, and we will take steps to ensure that your Personal Information is adequately protected, secure and kept confidential. If we engage a third party to provide pre-employment screening services or testing, we will ensure that access is limited to the Personal Information that is compatible with those services and the service provider is contractually obliged to comply with applicable data privacy laws, confidentiality and provide adequate safeguards to keep your Personal Information secure until it is deleted or anonymised.

By applying for employment with us, you consent to us processing your Personal Information for these purposes. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, we will not be able to continue with your application.

If your employment application is unsuccessful, we will retain your Personal Information on our HR database for a reasonable period for the purposes of evidencing that we have conducted the recruitment process in a fair and transparent way and have not discriminated against applicants on prohibited grounds. At the end of the retention period, your Personal Information will be deleted. Occasionally we may ask if you would like us to retain your CV data if we consider that you may be suitable for future roles. We will only do this with your consent.

Details obtained (if ever) about your, unspent criminal convictions, court proceedings, or any pending proceedings relating to an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by you is only processed if it is relevant upon request of our clients and in accordance with the restrictions imposed by law. We may be obliged to disclose unspent convictions and criminal proceedings to our clients so that they can determine if these are relevant to your suitability for a role within their organisation. If you disclose sensitive information to us (such as medical certificates for HR management if you are working as a temporary worker supplied through Robert Half), we will only collect this with your consent. This information will be retained for no longer than necessary before being deleted.

If you are a client or supplier or a potential client or supplier, of goods and services we will collect and process information about individuals in your organisation. We may enter the individual’s name, contact number and business email address into our database as a designated corporate point of contact for that organisation, together with the individual’s other business contact data. Usually, this is the only Personal Information processed for the purposes of contacting the organisation in relation to our services and authorising time sheets or the supplier as a recipient of the supplier’s goods and services. If the individual corporate point of contact is also a registered candidate, we may be processing additional Personal Information for work finding and other purposes as described in this Privacy Notice. The source of a corporate point of contact may be the individual themselves, or their name and business details may be provided to us by a member of their HR or Procurement department or another hiring manager or existing business contact or a candidate we have placed at the organisation. We may also obtain these details from websites, social media and other sources. We may send business to business email marketing to corporate points of contact. An individual corporate point of contact can ask us at any time to stop sending business marketing emails to their business email address by filling out our online Unsubscribe form: https://www.roberthalf.com/hk/en/insights/unsubscribe

If you are a referee, we collect information that is reasonably necessary for us to determine a candidate’s suitability for work with us or through us. The main types of information we collect about referees are:

your contact details including your email address and telephone numbers; and

details of your job title/description; and

your confidential opinions about a candidate and their suitability for work with or through us.

When you use this website, we may ask for certain Personal Information including your name and contact information (email, home address and phone number). Depending on the nature of your enquiry or activities on our website, we may also ask for your job search criteria and preferences, employment experience, salary, and other background information together with any login ID and password (if any) created by you. You can sign up to send you job alerts through the website by completing your job search criteria and preferences. You can stop receiving these job alerts at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link contained in the job alert email.

If you do not provide such information, we may not be able to provide you with access to certain services and functionality of the website or with any other services you request.

Our website also utilises cookies to track your online activities, including, but not limited to: registration; submissions; and information requests. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record keeping purpose. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies. Cookies in and of themselves do not personally identify users, although they do identify a user’s browser. If you do not wish to receive any cookies, you may set your browser to refuse cookies. This may mean you will not be able take full advantages of the services on the Site.

We may automatically collect or receive from third parties the following data (“Informative Data”) through tracking tools such as cookies, web beacons or tracking pixels to provide you with information or advertisements tailored to your interests and preferences. We may use this Informative Data either independently or in combination with other personal information.

Informative Data includes:

data that cannot independently identify a specific individual, including behavioral history (data used to analyse interests and preferences by aggregating data such as website browsing history), email tracking information and advertising identifier information.

We will only use your Personal Information for the purposes for which we collected it, and will not use or disclose any information about you without your consent, unless the use or disclosure is:

for the purpose of disclosing information to our clients where necessary and appropriate in connection with the provision of a service to you;

for the purpose of disclosing information to companies and individuals we employ to perform business functions and services on our behalf, on the basis that such companies and individuals must protect your Personal Information and may not disclose or use it for unrelated purposes. Such functions may include, for example, hosting our Web servers, analysing data, providing legal, accounting and marketing services;

permitted under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance as a permitted general situation or a permitted health situation;

necessary to provide you with a product or service which you have requested;

to the extent necessary or appropriate to government agencies, advisors, and other third parties in order to comply with applicable laws, the service of legal process, or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary to (a) comply with the law requiring such disclosure; (b) protect the rights or property of Robert Half or its affiliated companies; (c) prevent a crime or protect national security; (d) protect the personal safety of the users or the public; (e) to assist the investigation of an offence by a law enforcement authority; or prevent a serious or imminent threat to an individual's life, health or safety or public health or safety; or

as part of an automated solution to assess your suitability as a candidate for particular roles and for the purpose of considering your suitability for other, similar roles.

We will also disclose your Personal Information to our Clients in relation to their job vacancies.

In addition to the purposes set forth in Your Personal Information and How We Collect It, Wwe may process your Personal Information for other legitimate business purposes such as targeting advertisements, producing statistics, analysing how successful our marketing campaigns or services are, optimising our advertisement distribution, analysing the number of visitors to our website, performance of our website and complying with other contractual, legal and regulatory obligations and duties.

If you provide us with information about third parties, we will assume that the third party in question has given you permission to do so and to Robert Half collecting, processing and disclosing their Personal Information to the same extent as yours.

Our success is dependent on efficiently matching candidates to clients’ vacancies. In this context we use artificial intelligence (AI) provided by a third party based in the European Union as this assists our recruitment consultants perform the search and match of proposed candidates with client job vacancies more efficiently. The benefit of the AI search capability is that it supports our recruitment consultants to search more CVs and match -Personal Information against clients’ job vacancies faster, ignoring irrelevant data. Our recruitment consultants are presented with a list of proposed candidates that are potentially suitable for a client’s vacancy, but it does not lead to automated decision-making. Our recruitment consultants decide which candidates to shortlist for a specific client’s job, based on their expertise, knowledge of the job market, insight into the client’s business and requirements for the role, candidate discussions and other relevant criteria. Clients’ (through their hiring personnel) decide which candidates to select for interview (if any). Our clients’ hiring personnel (not our AI tool) make the final decision on which candidate to select for their job (if any) and ultimately to proceed to hire/engage/employ the candidate.

If you object to the processing of your Personal Information by our AI tool our recruitment consultants will continue to provide work finding services using other methods to search for job opportunities for you. The Personal Information of candidates who are no longer available for work, not actively seeking a job, have recently commenced permanent employment or who object the processing of their Personal Information by AI, will be deleted by our AI service provider.

To the extent necessary or appropriate and without notifying you, Robert Half may disclose your Personal Information to external third parties (who are not members of the Robert Half group of companies) in the following circumstances:

to third parties in and outside of Hong Kong we employ to perform business functions and services on our behalf. Examples of service providers include right to work checks, providing payroll services to enable us to pay our employees and temporary workers who work on client premises; background screening and verification services; data storage facilities including in the US and the Cloud; hosting our Web servers; managing job posting applications via our third-party provider; analysing data and producing statistics and legal, accounting, audit and other professional services.

to government agencies if required by applicable laws or regulations, including the Inland Revenue Department, law enforcement agencies; regulatory and supervisory authorities; credit reference agencies; and third parties performing sanctions and terrorism checks.

to comply with applicable laws, the service of legal process, or if we reasonably believe that such action is necessary to: (a) comply with the law requiring such disclosure; (b) protect the rights or property of Robert Half or its group companies; (c) prevent a crime, protect national security or for fraud detection or prevention; or (d) protect the personal safety of individuals using our website or members of the public.

to third parties in and outside of Hong Kong to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them; and

to third-party IT consultants carrying out testing and development work on our IT systems, other service providers (including providers of relevant IT solutions) who we may appoint as data processors and who may be based outside of Hong Kong where your data may be stored.

Where applicable, we will impose appropriate contractual, security, confidentiality and other obligations on to third party service providers and processors we have appointed, based on the nature of the services they provide to us. We will only permit them to process your Personal Information in accordance with the law and our instructions. We do not allow them to use your Personal information for their own purposes and when our relationship ends, we will ensure your Personal Information is securely returned or destroyed or anonymised so that you can no longer be identified.

With your consent and in accordance with applicable law, we may use your Personal Information to send you direct marketing communications or marketing materials regarding our products or services, including job vacancies and event invitations. You may opt out of receiving such marketing communications by unsubscribing from our database.

We share the Robert Half candidate database including your Personal Information with our group companies including Protiviti Hong Kong Company Limited, a Hong Kong based consultancy providing consultancy and work finding services across its business solution areas, and Protiviti Member Firms including Protiviti Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.

From time to time we advertise Protiviti roles and if you apply, your CV and Personal Information is shared directly with Protiviti who will contact you about their role.

If you register as a candidate with Robert Half Hong Kong Limited, you may also be contacted by Protiviti in connection with job opportunities that Protiviti consider may be of interest to you such as Interim and Project Consultancy roles. You may be invited to register directly with Protiviti to enable Protiviti to represent you and provide its services. If you have already registered as a Robert Half candidate and you later decide to register with Protiviti, we may ask for your consent to share your Candidate Registration documents and your Personal Information with Protiviti including its affiliates and Member Firms, for your convenience.

Protiviti has implemented the same high standards of data security as Robert Half and will treat your Personal Information in accordance with the law, respecting your legal rights and as set out in the Protiviti Privacy Policy.

Robert Half is part of an international group of companies operating globally. We may share some of your Personal Information or Informative Data with our group companies, including Protiviti Hong Kong Company Limited a Hong Kong based consultancy, our parent company Robert Half Inc., based in the United States, and other group companies outside Hong Kong and Protiviti Member Firms, who may use and process your Personal Information for similar purposes as described in this Privacy Notice.

We may also transfer your personal details to clients of the Company or third parties who provide services to the Company. These entities are located in Hong Kong, Australia, United States, EEA and other countries.

Robert Half will endeavour to take reasonable steps to protect Personal Information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. You should note that the internet is not a completely secure method of transmitting information and, as such, we are not responsible for the security of any information sent or received over the internet. Furthermore, Robert Half may disclose, and you consent to such disclosure of Personal Information to Robert Half servers and electronic systems located outside the country where you are located. This is due to Robert Half using overseas facilities to store, process or back up its information. However, this does not change our commitment to keep your information secure.

You are entitled to request access to any Personal Information that we hold about you, and you can do this by contacting the Privacy Officer via email: [email protected]. You may request that we correct Personal Information that is inaccurate or out of date.

Subject to applicable laws, we may charge a reasonable fee to exercise any of these rights or refuse to comply with your request in certain circumstances. If you have any concerns or complaints about how we handle your personal information, or if you have any questions about this Privacy Notice , please contact the Privacy Officer by emailing [email protected].

In most cases we will ask that you put your request in writing to us. We will investigate your complaint and will provide our response within 40 days.

If we change material terms in this Privacy Notice, we will provide notice of the revised Privacy Notice for 30 days on the home page at www.roberthalf.com/hk with a link back to this Privacy Notice. Provided the purpose for which we have collected the Personal Information has not changed, the amended Privacy Notice will apply between us after the notice period has passed, regardless whether or not we have given you specific notice of any change.

This Privacy Notice is effective as of 16 December 2024. If you have any questions about our website privacy policies, please contact us at:

Robert Half Hong Kong Limited Attn: Privacy Officer 9th Floor Nexxus Building 41 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong Email: [email protected]

EA Licence No. 74072