Applicant & HR Privacy Notice

Last updated: September 13, 2023

1. Introduction

This Privacy Notice explains how Blind Squirrel Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries (collectively, “Company”, “Blind Squirrel”, “we”, “our”, “us”) process the personal information of and specific to job applicants and employees. It is not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations. Whomever you submit your application to, be that Blind Squirrel or a third party service provider utilized by Blind Squirrel, will be the data controller of your personal information.

Notice at Collection of Personal Information: Please see the Categories of Information Collected and Our Use of Personal Information sections for an overview of what information we collect, and why, and the Your Rights section for information about how to exercise your privacy rights.

2. What is Personal Information?

The term “personal information” in this Privacy Notice, means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, to you. It does not include aggregated or anonymized information that is maintained in a form that is not capable of being associated with you.

3. Categories of Personal Information We Collect

We collect personal information about you when you apply for a job with us, during the applicant recruitment and tracking process, and throughout your ongoing employment relationship with us, which, depending on the location, may include information such as:

• Identifiers / Personal Information: Name, signature, government-issued identifier (e.g., Social Security number), contact details (email address, home address and telephone number), IP address, date of birth, passport number, driver’s license pr state identification card number, federal identification authorizing work in the United States or otherwise, visa sponsorship, and other similar identifiers.
• Professional & Employment-Related Information: Your employment history, including previous employers, positions, titles and work experience; professional licenses, certificates or other qualifications; employment references or referrals; any test results, performance evaluations, or assessments required to ascertain suitability for specific roles; and any personal information you choose to share with us in your interview or application, such as: CV, resume, social accounts (e.g., LinkedIn profile), work location preferences, code samples, immigration and work authorization requirements, or other supporting documentation.
• Educational History & Qualifications: Your highest level of education, the educational institution you attended and when, degrees, certificates or other educational qualifications, your transcripts, past GPAs, years attended, and educational references.
• Financial Information:  Salary, bonus, benefits, expenses, bank account number, and stock or equity grants.
• Web-Related Information: Such as technical details about your visit to our online services, analytics data relating to your usage and activity on our online services, browsing history and interactions with our online systems and websites and any personal information that you provide while accessing the Company’s computer systems, such as personal credit card information and passwords;
• Geolocation data: Such as applicant or device location from usage of the Company’s devices;
• Audio / Visual Information: Such as portfolios, reels, and other videos and images you choose to share with us in your interview or application.
• Behavioral data: Inferences drawn from any of the persona and Sensitive Personal Information listed below to create a profile or summary about, for example, your preferences and characteristics.

We may also collect and process sensitive personal information if necessary for limited purposes, and subject to local law:

• Background Check Information: When permitted by applicable law, we may choose to conduct a background check in connection with your application, which may include a credit check, verification of professional and educational history, or identification of criminal history.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Information / Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law: When you choose to provide it, this includes age, race, ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, sex, gender identity, preferred pronouns, primary language, immigration status, sexual orientation, religion, marital status, military or veteran status, disability, or accommodation request. This personal information will not be used in the hiring decision, unless specifically permitted by law.
• Health-Related Information: Such as health check indicators of possible infection, vaccination status and records, clearance or registration to enter an office or location and any other information necessary to manage health risks or make reasonable adjustments.

4. Our Use of Personal Information

We use the personal information we collect during the recruiting process, when you apply for a job with us and throughout our ongoing employment relationship with you to:

• Identify you as a potential candidate and review your application;
• Verify the information provided to us in connection with your application or received from other sources;
• Determine your eligibility and suitability for the potential position or other opportunities with us (such as conducting assessments or receiving additional information, services or products);
• Review immigration status including supporting visa applications;
• Facilitate the recruiting and interview process, including pre-hire actions (such as providing physical and/or network access, and IT support and services);
• Communicate with you about the status of your application or other opportunities with us that may be of interest to you;
• Assess and improve the performance and success of our recruiting and hiring process, resource and financial planning, and administration;
• Operate, manage and maintain our business, as well as to create a highly engaged workforce;
• Provide health benefits and related services;
• Support a diverse workplace and promote diversity, inclusion, and equal employment opportunities;
• Conduct internal investigations, audits, compliance, risk management, problem resolution and security operations;
• Comply with applicable laws, rules, regulations, legal proceedings, enforcement actions, and government investigations, including relating to maintain records, tax reporting and immigration; and
• To otherwise accomplish our business purposes and objectives, including, for example:
  • Emergency services;
  • Conducting research, analytics, and data analysis;
  • Maintaining our facilities and infrastructure;
  • Quality and safety assurance measures; -Conducting risk and security controls and monitoring;
  • Protecting confidential and trade secret information;
  • Detecting and preventing fraud;
  • Performing identity verification;
  • Performing accounting, audit, and other internal functions, such as internal investigations.

5. Sources of Personal Information We Collect

Although we often collect the personal information described above directly from you, we may collect certain information from references, recruiters, job-related social media sites, publicly available sources, and background screening providers.

6. The Legal Reasons We Rely on to Process Your Personal Information

Blind Squirrel processes your personal information based on several legal grounds depending on the jurisdiction you are in, the nature of the information and the processing involved. For example, our processing is necessary to:

• Pursue our legitimate interests – Such as to review your application, communicate with you, protect physical and network security and prevent fraud, and manage your job application for positions with us, including extending any job offer to you and completing the steps necessary to further the employment relationship.
• Comply with a legal obligation – Such as establishing or obtaining the right to work in certain jurisdictions and retaining information for fixed periods of time to comply with local legal requirements on recordkeeping.
• Take steps prior to entering a contract with you or, where applicable, necessary for conducting human resource management– Such as to assess your application, and your suitability for a role, to assess any entitlement to benefits, to set up any resources or assistance required for any potential role.

Another legal ground we rely on is:

• Consent - In certain countries and in some limited situations, Blind Squirrel relies on your voluntary consent to process your personal information. Please be advised that responding to a job posting and/or submission of a job application to Blind Squirrel or a third-party service provider through which Blind Squirrel has posted an open position is considered voluntary consent for the purpose of this Notice. Without such consent, we are not able to process your application. Where you have provided consent, you can withdraw this at any time by contacting us at privacy@blindsquirrelgames.com. Any decision to pursue and maintain an employment relationship with Blind Squirrel after receipt of any offer for employment will also be considered voluntary consent.

7. Your Rights

Depending on where you are located, you may have certain rights regarding your personal information including rights to:

• Information: To know what personal information we are processing and why.
• Access: To request a copy of your personal information.
• Correction: To request correction of your personal information where it is inaccurate.
• Deletion:  In certain circumstances, to request deletion of your personal information where the continued processing is no longer necessary.
• Object:  To request that we stop processing your personal information particularly where there are no longer sufficient legitimate grounds to continue such processing.
• Restrict: To request that we limit the processing of your personal information.
• Portability: In certain circumstances, you may request that your personal information is transferred to a third-party.

If you wish to exercise one of these rights, please contact the Human Resources/Recruiting department or privacy@blindsquirrelgames.com. We will not charge you a fee for dealing with your request, other than where the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive (such as if you submit several repeated requests), in which case we may charge you a reasonable fee to cover our administrative costs. We may also ask you to provide certain information to help us confirm your identity.

Depending on applicable law, you may also have the right to lodge a complaint with your national data protection authority.

8. Recipients of Personal Information

• Blind Squirrel Entities: Your personal information will be provided to the Blind Squirrel entity that has posted the position for which you are applying, and may also be shared with other entities and Blind Squirrel’s subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States, New Zealand and other entities outside of your region, where necessary for legitimate business purposes.

• Service Providers: We may share your personal information with third parties that perform services for us on our behalf in connection with job postings, applicant assessment and hiring processes, human resources-related tasks and data hosting services, such as IT service providers, background screening providers, or HR database services. We will (i) exercise appropriate due diligence in the selection of such third party service providers, and (ii) require via appropriate contractual measures that such third party service providers maintain adequate technical and organizational security measures to safeguard personal information, and process personal information only as instructed by Blind Squirrel and for no other purposes. You may view a complete list of our third party service providers with links to their respective privacy policies as follows:

  • “Jobvite” is an applicant tracking system and recruitment platform. You can find their privacy policy here: https://www.employinc.com/privacy/

  • “HireRight” is utilized to conduct background checks, verify past employment and education

history, criminal history and sex offender registry. Their policies in relation to privacy and data collection can be found here: https://www.hireright.com/legal

• “Paychex Flex” provides human resources, payroll, and benefits outsourcing services. Their policies in relation to such services can be found here: https://www.paychex.com/corporate/security/privacy

• “E-Verify” is an employment eligibility verification system that confirms an individual’s authorization to work in the United States. You can find E-Verify’s privacy policy here: https://www.uscis.gov/website-policies/privacy-and-legal-disclaimers

• “15Five” is a management platform that is used to track employee performance. Its privacy policy can be found here: https://www.15five.com/privacy/

• Government or Public Authorities: Blind Squirrel may transfer your personal information to government agencies, regulators, or authorities (such as tax authorities or law enforcement), or courts, or where otherwise required or permitted by applicable law (which may include lawful access by foreign courts, law enforcement or other government authorities).

• Sale or Merger: Where we consider a business transition, like a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or part of our assets, we may disclose or transfer your personal information to the purchaser.

Except as described above, we do not sell or share for cross-context behavioral advertising applicants’ Personal Data or Sensitive Personal Data.

9. Cross-border Transfers of Personal Information

As necessary in connection with the purposes described in this Privacy Notice, limited members of the human resources, finance, legal, and the IT departments of Blind Squirrel or affiliated company points of contact (i.e., persons with assigned responsibility for the services performed by an applicant) may access and otherwise process personal information in the United States, New Zealand, and other locations in connection with their job responsibilities. Personal information may also be shared with service providers, affiliates, other members of the Blind Squirrel company group, and other third parties located in countries that may not provide an equivalent level of data protection. Where we transfer your personal information internationally, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information is subject to appropriate safeguards, including through the use of approved standard contractual clauses or other legally authorized methods to legitimize such transfer. For more information about international data transfers, please contact privacy@blindsquirrelgames.com.

10. Security Safeguards in Place

We have implemented reasonable and appropriate technical, administrative, organizational, and physical security measures that are designed to protect your information from unauthorized access, disclosure, use, and modification.

11. Retention

We will store the personal information we collect about you for no longer than necessary and in accordance with our legal obligations and our legitimate interests.

• If your application is successful and you become an employee, where permitted by local law, the personal information we collect during the application process may be transferred to your personnel file and stored in accordance with Blind Squirrel’s data retention practices and local law. Your information will be retained for a period of time after your termination so as to comply with any legal obligations, claims, regulatory, and auditing purposes, and to protect Blind Squirrel’s legal rights.
• If your application is not successful, we will retain your personal information for a period of time after you have been informed that your application is not successful. For example, we may use it to contact you (unless you reach out to Blind Squirrel and ask that us not to, to the extent that such information can be deleted in accordance with applicable laws) about any other relevant employment opportunities that may arise with Blind Squirrel, and to protect Blind Squirrel’s legal rights, including in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory, and auditing purposes. If you do not wish to be notified of future employment opportunities, please email privacy@blindsquirrelgames.com, confirming this preference.
• Where you have given us your consent to process certain Equal Opportunities Information, we may anonymize and aggregate this information and store it in such form that does not personally identify you, for the purpose of monitoring and improving the application and recruitment process.

12. Updates to this Privacy Notice

Any information that is collected through the application process or your employment by us is covered by the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected. If we decide to make material changes to our Privacy Policy, we will notify you and other users by placing a notice on blindsquirrelentertainment.com or by sending you a notice to the e-mail address we have on file for you, and we’ll update the “Last Updated Date” above to indicate when those changes will become effective. We may supplement this process by placing notices on our Site. You should periodically check blindsquirrelentertainment.com and this privacy page for updates.

13. Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding our Privacy Policy and/or practices, please send an e-mail to privacy@blindsquirrelgames.com.

Blind Squirrel Entertainment, Inc. 320 Commerce Suite 250 Irvine, CA 92602