The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU law which has been developed to preserve the personal data of EU residents and offer them more autonomy regarding their rights to privacy. In our hyper-connected digital age, data protection is critical and this initiative is in place to assist in such matters.

Launched in May 2018, this comprehensive (and somewhat daunting) set of rules, regulations and processes has already a significant impact on businesses and institutions across the continent.

A failure to follow the rules could result in disaster for your institution. And when you’re dealing with rafts of student applications on a regular basis, you must tread carefully when it comes to data protection.

Making sure that every single one of your student recruitment processes comply with GDPR regulation is not optional - these days, it’s essential if you want to continue in the educational sector.

Yes, this is daunting but to help steer your success, here’s a definitive GDPR student recruitment checklist that will keep you on the right side of European data protection law.

Let’s get started.

 

Your essential GDP student recruitment checklist

Studies show that the number of higher education students has doubled globally since the year 2000. This number now equates to around 207 million active academics worldwide.

With the number of student applications continuing to rise, it’s the responsibility of institutions to protect and handle the data captured, requested or divulged during the often digital application process. And when you consider the numbers, that’s a lot of data, a lot of data, indeed.

So, to help ensure your student application process is completely GDPR compliant, these are the measures you should take at your earliest possible convenience:

❏    Get wise with the basic lingo: Candidates or 'data subjects' mean ‘EU-based students’ that you're considering for acceptance;  Employers or 'data controllers’ refer to organizations or institutions that collect student applicant data for recruitment purposes and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) or 'data processors' are software providers that handle candidate data on behalf of institutions.

❏    Learn all you can about recruitment-centric GDPR regulation: Areas including legitimate interest, consent, accountability and the right to access data are all 100% vital to today’s EU-based student recruitment processes. You can study these regulations in detail through the official GDPR website.

❏    Map your student recruitment data stringently: Meet with all senior members within your institution and audit your existing data processes, covering areas such as the level of candidate information you collect and how you handle it, how you store and access your student data, your institution's general data flow and your sharing, transferring, modifying or deleting activities.

❏    Create a student recruitment-specific privacy policy: Developing a full privacy policy will help you stay compliant while protecting all of your student candidate data. Here is a privacy policy template that will help you steer your efforts in the right direction.

❏    Break down your student application process or journey: Your student application journey will be rich with informational exchanges, so make sure you can break it down into smaller sections by performing a micro-audit of the journey, from the initial application page to the interview and acceptance or decline process, making sure that every aspect falls in-line with your GDPR-friendly data map and privacy policy.

❏    Look at your third parties: This is incredibly important - examine every one of your software platforms and third party vendors or service providers, checking that they’re 100% GDPR compliant. If not, you should source a replacement or encourage them to take immediate action otherwise, you could land yourself in hot water by proxy.

❏    Invest in compliance tools: Expanding on our previous point, to handle your new processes, you should invest in structure data consent tools (that are GDPR compliant, of course), to help you navigate your way through these changes both autonomously and accurately. Doing so will save you a great deal of time, effort and investment in the long run.

Armed with this new information, you will be able to work through this checklist methodically, making sure that your student recruitment journey is 110% GDPR compliant - best of luck.

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