NextStep Portal Privacy Notice

Your privacy is important to us. We believe it is important for you to know how we treat the information we receive from you, on the Internet. This privacy notice explains what personal data we, TCS and all its affiliates in various countries around the world (“Tata Consultancy Services”, “Tata Consultancy Services Limited” or “we”), collect from you, through our interactions with you, and how we use that data when you are applying for a job offer on the portal https://www.tcs.com/careers and later during the recruitment process.

As part of any recruitment process, TCS collects and processes personal data relating to job applicants. The organization is committed to being transparent about how it collects and uses that data and to meeting its data protection obligations.

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES

TCS will comply with applicable data protection laws and their internal policy regarding data protection. This means that the personal data we hold about you must be:

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
• Collected only for valid purposes that we declare in the item “Why does TCS process personal data?”, and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
• Accurate and kept up to date.
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
• Kept securely.

What information do we collect?

Personal data means any information relating to a natural person from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (AKA anonymous data). TCS collects a range of information about you. For your reference this would include data such as:

Your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number

Details of your qualifications, skills, experience and employment history

Information about your remuneration, including benefit entitlements.

Any other information you decide to share with us during the registration on the portal.

TCS may collect this information, which in some cases may be considered particularly sensitive, in a variety of ways. For example, data contained in application forms, CVs or resumes, photos, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment.

Information will be stored in a range of different places, including on your application record, in HR management systems and on other IT systems.

Why does TCS collect and process personal data?

TCS has a legitimate interest in collecting and processing personal data during the recruitment process and in keeping records of the process. Processing data from job applicants allows us to manage the recruitment process, assess and confirm an applicant’s suitability for employment and decide to whom to offer a job and any other employment related activities on successful joining in TCS.

We may also process your personal data where we need to take steps at your request prior to entering an employment contract, and to perform activities finalized at the signature of the employment contract, like determining the terms on which you work for us, checking if you are legally entitled to work in the country of employment and similar. We may also need to process data from job applicants to respond to and defend against legal claims.

The processing of data could include use of AI, for purposes such as verification of documents. The processing of data through AI will be used only to provide inputs to humans. All AI processing occurs within secure systems, and your personal information will remain confidential and protected against unauthorized access.

TCS also needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with legal obligations of entering into a contract with you and demonstrating the lawfulness of the application and selection process.

“If your application is unsuccessful, TCS may retain your data to inform you of any suitable opportunities in the future.”

To conduct TCS National Qualifier Test (TCS NQT)

If you choose to enroll for the TCS National Qualifier Test (TCS NQT), then for the purpose of administering the test in various categories we will collect the following information from you:

• Full name
• Name of College, College address, Academic details
• Email address
• Telephone number,
• Location
• Identity card for verification
• Pictures and video (in case of video interview) of you

During the assessment the following information about you will be generated by our inhouse and third-party assessment applications

• Score in various groups of assessments

The personality test section of TCS NQT will use a Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence based colour pattern assessment from third party to determine your

• Working Style, Learning Style, Dominant Attributes and Compatibility Attributes
• Fitment score to the nature of job you are applying for.

The above information will be processed for shortlisting you in the TCS NQT and will be shared with the interview panel, HR and Talent Acquisition Group for the subsequent steps in the recruitment process. The data also will be processed for analytical purposes and to improve the applications and processes.

If you fail to provide personal data

If you fail to provide certain information, as permitted by applicable laws in various countries, when requested, we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations and therefore, we may not be able to proceed with the selection process.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above criteria, where this is required or permitted by law.

Who has access to data?

Your information may be shared internally, with the other entities of our group and third parties for the purposes of the recruitment process. This includes members of the Human Resources (HR) and recruitment team, interviewers involved in the recruitment process, managers in the business area, clients, Background Check (BGC) vendors, third party vendors and other relevant teams like Compliance, Marketing, Legal, Finance & Accounting, Internal Audit and IT staff if access to the data is necessary for the performance of their roles.

We also share your personal data with other third party service providers that may assist us in recruiting talent, evaluating and pre-employment and post-employment screening and testing, and improving our recruiting practices.

We maintain processes designed to ensure that any processing of personal data by third party service providers is consistent with this Privacy Notice and protects the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of your personal data.

Transferring your personal data outside of your country of residence

We may transfer the personal data we collect about you to one of more countries outside of your country of residence or outside of the country in which you access this website, including India, in order to perform one of the activities listed above (refer sections in the document on what information we process and why). In such cases, we have put in place the appropriate measures to ensure that your personal data will be secure according to the laws of the country in which you reside.

How does TCS protect your data?

We take the security of your data seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees or third parties indicated above, in the proper performance of their duties.

For how long does TCS retain data?

In case of a positive outcome of the recruiting process, your personal data will become part of your personnel records and securely stored and processed according to our Privacy Policy and Employment Notice, which will be provided to you at the right time.

In case of a not successful application, or you reject the TCS offer, TCS will retain your personal data as per applicable employment law requirement for/in a specific geography. TCS will also retain your personal data, in case you specify your choice to TCS during the recruitment process to consider you for new positions, and, if appropriate, to refer to an earlier application if you submit a resume or other information to TCS again in the future. TCS determines the retention period of your information based on the following retention criteria:

We will retain your personal data as long as it has on ongoing relationship with you or we consider your profile still suitable for other job positions; to determine the appropriate retention period in this case, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized 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, and the applicable legal requirements;

We may retain your personal data where it is required to do so by a legal obligation to which it is subject.

We will retain your personal data where this is advisable to safeguard or improve TCS’s legal position (for instance in relation to statutes of limitations, litigation, or regulatory investigations).

In some circumstances we may anonymize your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

Your rights

If you are registering your profile, you can exercise your rights as below in accordance with the applicable Data Protection Law:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you. Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.
• Object to decisions being taken by automated means.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact TCS Talent Acquisition Head at privacy.talentacquisition@tcs.com. The aforementioned rights will be evaluated according to the limitations and / or specifications that each local legislation establishes.

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates, through the same portal where this privacy notice is hosted.

We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal data.

Contact

If you have a concern, complaint or a question regarding this privacy notice, please direct it to the Head – Global Privacy Office of Tata Consultancy Services at tcs.cpo@tcs.com.