Relying on legitimate interest for data retention

• Configuring General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) settings
• Configuring localized data compliance settings

How opportunity data is stored under legitimate interest

Under legitimate interest, Lever will suggest that an opportunity be anonymized when your chosen expiration period has lapsed. Lever will surface opportunities that should be anonymized in a number of ways, including email notifications, inbox notifications, the 'Data Requests' report, the User Workspace 'my tasks' list, and with a banner on the opportunity. To learn more on how to anonymize candidate data, refer to our help article on anonymizing candidate opportunities.

Banner when localized data compliance is configured

Banner when GDPR is configured

Candidates may have multiple opportunities associated with jobs where legitimate interest applies. As such, it is possible that your settings dictate that you have a legitimate interest to retain the data from one opportunity and not the others. This can be the case if the opportunities were archived at different times. Only the opportunity that has passed the expiration period will be included when filtering for opportunities due for anonymization, and only the expired opportunity will have the anonymization banner displayed. After anonymizing from the ellipses menu, data for this opportunity will be removed from Lever, and will no longer be visible on the candidates other opportunities.

Example

A candidate applies to two job postings - 'job A' on January 1, 2022 and 'job B' on June 1, 2022. Both opportunities are archived, and the organization has configured GDPR with a lawful basis of legitimate interest and a retention policy of 2 years. On January 1, 2024 the opportunity associated with job A is surfaced for anonymization, but the organization may retain the data associated with opportunity B until June 1, 2024.

When relying on legitimate interest, if a candidate is not based in a protected location, and has applied to roles in both GDPR protected and non-protected locations, you will be prompted to anonymize both the opportunities for jobs in GDPR protected locations and those in GDPR non-protected locations. All of their linked opportunities will say that they are protected by GDPR.

Example

A candidate applies to two job postings - 'job A' based in a GDPR-protected location on January 1, 2022 and 'job B' based in a non-protected location on June 1, 2022. Both opportunities are archived, and the organization has configured GDPR with a lawful basis of legitimate interest and a retention policy of 2 years. On January 1, 2024 the opportunity for job A and the opportunity for job B are both surfaced for anonymization.

To learn more about how candidate consent appears on candidate profiles, refer to our help article on viewing consent information on a candidate's profile.

Sending unsubscribe links for future job opportunities

Additionally, if you chosen to rely on legitimate interest as your GDPR lawful basis, or if you selected legitimate interest for future job opportunity outreach under localized data compliance, you still have the opportunity to ask candidates whether they would like to be contacted regarding future opportunities with your company. This can also be used when capturing consent for candidates who did not apply through your career site such as referrals, sourced candidates, or candidates who were shared by an agency.

What are unsubscribe links and how do they work? 

Lever allows you to generate unsubscribe links, which are URLs that direct a candidate to a unique page where they are given the option to opt-out from future recruiting communications. Candidates can also review and submit data handling requests under the 'your data' tab. For more information on data handling preferences, refer to our help article on resolving data requests.

Adding unsubscribe links to emails

Unsubscribe links can be inserted into emails that you send to candidates using the 'Unsubscribe link' placeholder. To draft an individual email to a candidate, open their opportunity profile and click the mail button. To insert an unsubscribe link into the body of the email, open the 'Placeholder' menu in the email editor and select Unsubscribe link. The link will become live once you send the email to the candidate.

To make sending unsubscribe links even easier, consider creating an email template to collect candidate consent. The unsubscribe link placeholder can be inserted into email templates the same way it can be inserted into individual or bulk-sent emails (described above). Keep in mind that the unsubscribe link will appears as a placeholder in the body of the email template, and change to a unique live link once the template in which it is embedded is loaded in the email composer, and the email is then sent to the candidate. To learn more, refer to our help article on creating email templates.

Sending unsubscribe link emails in bulk

To send out unsubscribe links in bulk, start by selecting multiple opportunities in the pipeline and click the Email button in the bulk action toolbar.

Next, write out the message you want the candidates to receive, using Lever’s placeholders to for fields such as first name and last name. Open the placeholder menu and select the Unsubscribe link placeholder. Insert this placeholder into the body of the email to have Lever generate a unique link for each recipient. When sending unsubscribe links, we suggest providing context to the recipient as to what the link is and what it is for so that they know exactly what action is required.

Click Preview to see what the message will look like to the candidate. You will notice that each recipient is receiving a unique link. If the preview looks as expected, click Send to push the emails out to your candidates.