Updated February 2025

At Convergence Partners Ltd (“Convergence”), we take your privacy seriously. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, store and use personal information across Convergence.

Convergence manages your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and is committed to protecting the privacy of all individuals. We do not collect personal or sensitive information unless it is necessary for the performance of our tasks or functions.

This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time to reflect changes in law, technology and/or business operations. Convergence will not be liable for any loss or damage which may arise directly or indirectly as a result of such changes.

Summary of our Privacy Policy

We collect information that is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities as a recruitment consultancy.
We check that it is current, complete and accurate. This will sometimes mean that we have to cross-check the information that we collect from you with third parties, which we won’t do without your consent.
We record and hold your information in our cloud-based CRM system. Some information may be accessible to our third-party suppliers.
We retrieve your information when we need to use or disclose it for our functions and activities. At that time, we check that it is current, complete, accurate and relevant. This will sometimes mean that we have to cross-check the information that we collect from you with third parties (not without your consent) once again - especially if some time has passed since we last checked.
We destroy or de-identify your personal information when it is no longer needed for any purpose for which it may be used or disclosed provided that it is lawful for us to do so.

Personal and Sensitive Information

Personal information is any information we hold on an individual that identifies that individual. Examples include names, email addresses, phone numbers and work history.
Sensitive information is defined in the Privacy Act to include information or opinion about such things as an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious or philosophical beliefs, membership of a trade union or other professional body, criminal record or health information. We will only collect sensitive information in rare cases if deemed necessary and in accordance with the law.

Purpose of Collecting Personal Information for Candidates and Contractors

We collect Personal Information that is reasonably necessary for our functions or activities as a recruitment consultancy. Personal Information that we collect, hold, use and disclose about job seekers is typically used for:

Work placement operations including payroll management where relevant.
Recruitment functions, including verifying your identity and your right to work in New Zealand, maintaining our relationship with you, providing relevant information to our clients and keeping you informed of new developments that may be of interest to you.
Answering your enquiries.
Statistical purposes and statutory compliance requirements.
Communicating and marketing our services, advising you of news and industry updates, events, promotions, resources, surveys, and other information. Where we do so, you will be able to unsubscribe from such communications.
Obtaining and responding to your feedback on the quality of our services.
Psychometric evaluations or skills tests.
Pre-employment and probity checks by third-party providers who provide local and international services to us including but not limited, to reference checks, criminal record or national police checks, financial checks (ie - credit, anti-money laundering, etc), drug and alcohol, etc.
Meeting our obligations under applicable laws and agreements, and complying with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Convergence may also seek your consent to collect, hold, use and disclose your Personal Information for any other purpose not listed above. When we collect Personal Information we will, where appropriate and where possible, explain to you why we are collecting the information and how we plan to use it.

If you do not give us the information we seek, we may be limited in our ability to locate or place you in suitable work or provide you with relevant career guidance.

Information We Collect

Personal Information that we collect and hold is information that is reasonably necessary to assess amenability to work offers and work availability; suitability for placements; or to manage the performance in work obtained through us and includes:

Information to identify you (including name, residency information, passport, visa details and contact details).
Education and qualifications.
Work preferences and objectives.
Current and past employment details.
Current and expected salary.
Your resume or any registration paperwork.
Information recorded when you attend our office for an interview or participate in a telephone or online interview with us.
Any references about you we receive.
Results of enquiries that we might make of your former employers, work colleagues, professional associations or registration body.
Results of any competency or medical test we receive.
Performance feedback (whether positive or negative) we receive.
Any complaint from or about you in the workplace we receive.
Any information about a workplace accident in which you are involved we receive.
Any information about any insurance investigation, litigation, registration or professional disciplinary matter, criminal matter, inquest or inquiry in which you are involved we receive.
Bank details, payment information, IRD/GST number (if required for payroll purposes).
Records of our communications with you, such as telephone, email, SMS, online and in-person communications.
Any additional information about yourself you provide us with.

How We Collect Information

Personal information will be directly collected when:

You fill out and submit a job application via our advertising platforms (eg - SEEK, LinkedIn, etc)
You fill out an Interview Declaration Form and Referee Consent Form.
You submit any other information in connection with your application to us for work.
You attend our office for an interview or participate in a telephone or online interview with us.
You communicate with us via email, social media, phone or SMS.
You send us an email through our website.
You submit a timesheet.
Communicating with referees.
Through pre-employment and probity checks.
Through any competency or medical test we receive.
You provide us with any additional information about yourself.

We collect information from third parties and publicly available sources, such as LinkedIn, when it is necessary for a specific purpose such as checking information that you have given us or where you have consented or would reasonably expect us to collect your personal information in this way.

We may also collect Personal Information about you from a range of publicly available sources including newspapers, journals, directories, the Internet and social media sites.

Collection of Data through our Website

You can visit our website and browse without the need to disclose any Personal Information.
When you visit the Convergence website, we may collect anonymous information about your computer and your visits to this website such as your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, date and time and length of your visit and number of page views. We may use this information in the administration of this website, to improve the website's usability, and for marketing purposes. We log IP addresses to understand and manage visitor trends and traffic on our website. The patterns of usage of visitors to the online services may be tracked for the purposes of providing improved service and content based on aggregate or statistical review of user traffic patterns.
We collect personal information that individuals choose to give us via online forms or email, for example when individuals:
- Make a written online enquiry or email us through our website.
- Submit a CV or resume by email or through our website.
- Register as a candidate portal member.
It is important that you understand that there are risks associated with the use of the internet and you should take all appropriate steps to protect your personal information.
External sites that are linked to or from the Convergence website are not under our control and you are advised to review their Privacy Statement. Users should note there are inherent risks associated with the transmission of information via the internet and you should, therefore, make your own assessment of the potential risk to the security of your information.

Cookie Policy

Cookies are small text files that are placed in your browser by the websites you visit. They are widely used to help users navigate websites efficiently, to perform certain functions on the sites, and/or to provide site owners with information about how their sites are used.
Our website uses cookies to help us provide you with a better experience during your use of our website.
We also use tracking cookies with the Google Analytics tool to analyse non-identifiable web traffic data to improve our services. This data is aggregated and cannot personally identify you.

Terms and Conditions Governing the Use of our Convergence Website

For detailed information about our website Terms of Use, click here.

How we Disclose your Personal Information

Convergence will never sell or rent your personal information, however certain groups of people will have access to it, including:

Employees at Convergence as they have access to your Personal Information in order to perform their job.
Our clients if we are representing you for an employment opportunity.
Associated third parties specific to the recruitment process.
Third parties to conduct pre-employment and probity checks including but not limited to CVCheck, University/Tertiary Education Providers, Equifax, a nominated drug and alcohol testing organisation, a nominated psychometric testing organisation, Immigration New Zealand, professional associations, and/or other equivalent international entities or bodies.
Our service providers that we have engaged to provide a service to us in relation to the website or any service that we have agreed to provide you.
Courts, tribunals, and regulatory authorities as required by law.
Any other person or organisation that you have authorised us to disclose your information to.
If we need to disclose your personal information for any reason that is not listed above, we will explain why we need it and ask for your permission first.

Keeping your Personal Information Secure

We take a range of measures to reasonably protect your personal information from misuse, interference and loss; and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure:

Personal information is stored on a third party provided cloud based database which requires Single Sign-On (SSO) to gain access.
All data is managed within Vincere - refer to https://www.vincere.io/
Access to the database is only available to those who require such access.
All staff and third-party suppliers are bound by confidentiality agreements regarding company and customer information.
Visitors to our premises are always accompanied by a member of staff for the duration of the visit.
Hard copy information is disposed of in secure bins and shredded.
There is a mandatory password policy for laptops, mobile phones and portable storage devices.

Although we will do our best to protect the personal information you provide to us, we advise that no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure and we cannot guarantee the security of your Personal Information. Therefore, we are not responsible for the theft, destruction, or inadvertent disclosure of your personal information where our security measures have been breached.

We take our privacy responsibilities seriously. In the unlikely event that a suspected or actual breach of your personal information occurs, we will investigate the breach, and we will notify you and the Privacy Commissioner if we reasonably believe that the breach has caused you serious harm, or is likely to cause you serious harm.

Keeping your Personal Information Updated

It is an important to us that your Personal Information is up to date. We will take reasonable steps to make sure that your Personal Information is accurate, complete and up to date.
These steps include promptly updating personal information when we are advised that Personal Information has changed, checking our contact lists for accuracy, and providing individuals with a simple means to update their personal information.
If you find that the information we have is not up to date or is inaccurate, please advise us as soon as practicable so we can update our records and ensure we can continue to provide quality services to you.
If we have disclosed personal information about you that is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading, you can ask us to notify the third parties to whom we made the disclosure and we will take such steps (if any) as are reasonable in the circumstances to give that notification unless it is impracticable or unlawful to do so.

Access to your Personal Information

Subject to some exceptions set out in privacy law, you can gain access to your personal information that we hold. Important exceptions include evaluative opinion material obtained confidentially in the course of conducting interviews, performing reference checks, reporting to clients, and access that would impact on the privacy rights of other people.
You may request to see and have a copy of your personal information unless we are legally authorised to refuse your request. If you wish to obtain access to your personal information you should contact us on info@convergence.co.nz
You will need to be in a position to verify your identity.
You may also request that Convergence stops using your information and contacting you and we will comply with your request. However, if this involves a request for deletion of your file, please be aware that we may not be required or able to do so, particularly where your file also holds information about our clients.

How Long We Keep Your Personal Information

Convergence will retain your personal information for as long as it is required to achieve the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. If you request it or retaining your personal information is no longer necessary, we will delete or destroy it.

Direct Marketing

Convergence may advise you of news and industry updates, events, promotions, reports, resources and other information from time to time.
Where we do so, you may opt-out of receiving electronic communications from us at any time by withdrawing your consent or using the unsubscribe function. Keep in mind, an unsubscribe does not apply to any necessary communications that we may need to get in touch with you about, such as responding to an enquiry.
These communications will be delivered by Convergence and no information will be provided to a third party for marketing purposes. Convergence does not obtain customer lists from third parties for marketing purposes.

Spam or False Representation of Convergence

Convergence is not responsible for issues that have been caused or where you have been affected by accounts or people posing as Convergence employees or Convergence as a business.
If you have been contacted by such fake accounts, please report it to info@convergence.co.nz

Client Information

The type of information that we typically collect and hold about clients is information that is necessary to help us manage the presentation and delivery of our services and includes:

Information on a role you provide us with.
Information in relation to a candidate you have met that you provide us with.
Information on a business, structure, contact details, etc.
Details of the business that we present to candidates.

Personal information that we collect, hold, use and disclose is typically used for:

Recruitment functions and post placement follow-up.
Client and business relationship management.
Marketing services to you.
Statistical purposes and statutory compliance requirements.

Referees Information

The type of information that we typically collect and hold about referees is information that is necessary to help to make determinations about the suitability of one of our jobseekers for particular jobs or particular types of work and includes information you provide us with about a candidate, as well as company and contact information.
Personal information about you may be collected when you provide it to us in the course of our references with you or when we are checking information that we obtain from you about jobseekers.
Personal information that we collect, hold, use and disclose about referees is typically used for recruitment functions, including confirming your identity and authority to provide references, and assessing a jobseeker’s suitability.

Changes to this Policy

Convergence may, at any time, change the information in this privacy policy, without notice. Convergence reserves the right to alter, modify or update privacy policy. Any changes to this privacy policy will be posted here. Convergence will not be liable for any loss or damage which may arise directly or indirectly as a result of such changes.

How to contact us

We are committed to protecting your privacy and our policies, processes and systems have been developed with this in mind. If you have any concerns relating to any of our Policies or Terms, please email us at info@convergencepartners.co.nz and we will endeavour to respond promptly.