Privacy policy

You provide some data yourself:

• Personal information that you provide to us for the purpose of registering on the website. Such as your name, email address, date of birth, or other information relating to your current situation.
• Information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters

We collect some data automatically:

• Information about your computer and about your visits to and use of the website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views, and website navigation). We use this data to help us improve the website and the services we provide to you.
• If you are signed in, we’ll also know how you use the website. This helps us give you a better, more personalised service.

We will never ask unnecessary questions beyond what is required to provide you with the best service. Information may be provided by you, by a teacher, guardian or parent if you are a young person or may be passed to us by another agency working with you.

We process your personal information through our duties as a public organisation. We are justified under the General Data Protection Regulation in processing your personal information as it is necessary for us to do so in order to provide a careers service and relevant support to Scotland.

This justification can be found in Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Skills Development Scotland’s public duty to provide a careers service and its associated support comes from the Employment and Training Act 1973.

We use your data to undertake a number of activities:

• to administer the website
• to improve your browsing experience by personalising the website
• to enable your use of the services available on the website
• to send you general (non-marketing) commercial communications
• to send you email notifications which you have specifically requested
• to send you newsletters and other marketing communications which we think may be of interest to you by post or, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require marketing communications)
• to address enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to the website
• to analyse the information we collect so that we can administer, support and improve and develop our business and the services we offer
• to provide you with access to certain parts of our website
• for all other purposes consistent with the proper performance of our operations and business
• to contact you for your views on our services.
• provide you with effective careers advice
• If you have made use of the Skillsbuilder tool through the My World of Work younger offer, your teacher will have access to the data contained within the activity sheets and any content you have uploaded as evidence of your skill(s). This is so you can keep a record of the skills activities you were working on and discuss these with your teacher.

Applications to programmes

The Site also contains information about some of our programmes, and provides links to enable you to apply for these programmes.

• Where you can apply for any of our programmes through the Site, the information you provide to us will be subject to separate privacy terms, as the information you provide to us in relation to these matters may be used by us in a different way, and for different purposes.
• Details of the applicable privacy terms for each programme application are available either on, or through the links available on, the relevant pages of the Site.

We may contact you by post, telephone or SMS, as well as by e-mail. If you change your mind about being contacted in the future by any of these means then please let us know.

We will not provide your personal information to any third parties for the purpose of direct marketing.

Skills Development Scotland maintains a high standard of both physical and network security designed to protect paper or electronic forms of storage to hold and process your personal information.

Information that we hold about you will be subject to rigorous safeguards to ensure that it isn't accessed or disclosed inappropriately. We also take steps so that your information is not damaged or rendered unavailable to those who have a right to see it.

To meet confidentiality requirements for our customers, stakeholders and staff, Skills Development Scotland has Confidentiality, Data Protection, Information Technology and Systems Policies in place and we ensure that staff are fully aware of these and the associated guidance in relation to your personal information. These also apply when we dispose of paper records and delete electronic information in ways that ensure that your information cannot be recreated.

We may need to share some of your personal information with partners that work with us to deliver our services to you. Our partners are obliged to keep your information secure and to use the information only to fulfil specific and agreed purposes. We will check where possible that appropriate steps have been taken by the recipient to protect your information.

Because we want your experience of our website to be as informative and useful as possible, we may provide links to websites operated by third parties ("Third-Party Websites").

The website may also include functionality that allows you to publish your information onto third-party websites.

Please be aware that we do not control such Third-Party Websites and that such Third-Party Websites may send their own cookies to users, or otherwise collect data or solicit personal information.

We assume no responsibility for the information gathering practices of Third Party websites that you are able to access through our website, and we encourage you to review each Third-Party website's privacy policy before disclosing any personally identifiable information.

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity. For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.

For more information on cookies which are used on My World of Work, read our cookies policy.

When you give us any personal information we’ll let you know how long we’ll hold it for. If we don’t state a specific length of time, then we will follow these principles:

• We only hold your information for as long as we are running the activities we told you about
• We think about what type of information it is, the amount we have collected, how sensitive it might be and any legal requirements for us to store the data
• We design our services so that we don’t hold your information any longer than we have to, after which we delete it
• We always think about the potential risk from anyone using or sharing this information without permission, and have a number of procedures and checks to ensure only authorised people can view your data.

What if I have an account?

We’ll hold the personal information you give us as part of your account for as long as you are using an account with us.

• We may close your account if you haven’t used it in the last 5 years. We’ll send you an email to tell you that we plan to do this before we delete anything, so please check to see if we’ve sent you any emails about this
• If you delete your account, then your personal information will be deleted, and the remaining information made anonymous. We might then use it to help us improve our services.

As of 25th May 2018, you have a number of new rights available to you in terms of making a request to access the personal information we hold on you, to understand what we do with it and request that something be changed. It is completely free to make these requests.

If you wish to find out what these rights are, please find them here and get in touch with one of the contacts listed at the bottom of this notice if you wish to find more information or enact one of these rights.

The data controller responsible in respect of the information collected on this website is The Skills Development Scotland Co. Limited, which is notified to the Information Commissioner as a data controller with registration number Z1445093.

If you remain dissatisfied with our response following any review related to a request you have made regarding your personal data, you are entitled to appeal to the Information Commissioner. Such an application should be sent to the following address:

Information Commissioners Office

Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow SK9 5AF

Phone: 01625 545745

Website: ico.gov.uk

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please write to us by email at myworldofwork@sds.co.uk by post to Skills Development Scotland, Monteith House, 11 George Square, Glasgow G2 1DY.

Alternatively, you can get in touch with our Data Protection Officer at dpo@sds.co.uk, or alternatively our GDPR team at gdpr@sds.co.uk

If you delete your account, then your personal information will be deleted, and the remaining information made anonymous. We may then use this anonymous information to help us improve our services. 

Please be aware that if you choose to close your My World of Work account, you will no longer be able to access:  

• your CV(s)  
• results and reports from tools and services that you used on the site  
• information about education and experience saved in your account  
• partner resources  
• your account bookmarks  
• any other functionality or stored personalised content relating to you that may have been added or posted to the site  

If you have used other SDS services in the past, such as speaking to an SDS Careers Adviser, a member of the SDS PACE Team or have engaged in one of SDS’ programmes (e.g. Modern, Foundation or Graduate Apprenticeships), SDS may still hold personal information relating to you on our systems in relation to those services, and deleting your My World of Work account will not delete this other information. You can contact the SDS Data Protection Team at DPO@sds.co.uk if you have a request in relation to any other personal information we may hold on you.   

To close your account, please contact us using the 'feedback' button at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Please include your email address, full name, date of birth and postcode to ensure we can close your account.