Privacy policy

Who we are and what this policy covers

Affinity Search Partners is a search firm for technology and information-systems roles. We place technology leaders, permanent hires, contract-to-hire arrangements and contractors and consultants with employers in Middle Tennessee and elsewhere in the United States. Our postal address is 5115 Maryland Way, Suite 121, Brentwood, TN 37027.

The policy governs this website and the business emails sent from this domain and our related domains in the course of that work. "We" and "us" mean Affinity Search Partners. "You" means someone visiting the site, or someone we have approached or may approach in connection with our work.

Why we approach people, and whom

We write to people at companies where the job in question touches hiring, technology or the running of the business, since that is the ground our work covers. Our emails go to work addresses. Now and then we phone a business line or post a letter to a company address. We do not approach anyone about matters outside their professional role, and we approach a person at all only where there is reason to think the subject could matter to their work.

Everyone we approach can tell us to stop, and we do. The clause headed "Ending contact" explains how.

What we hold

Everything we hold is business information. Depending on the person and the source, it may cover:

• Work contact details: name, job title, employer, work email address, a business phone line, and the address of a professional profile, where each of these can be found.
• Facts about the employer: its line of business, size, location, the technology it runs and the positions it is filling.
• Public professional activity: open positions the company has advertised, news about it, and public posts that indicate whether our work is relevant.
• The outcome of a check on whether an email address can accept mail, which we run ahead of any send.
• What passes between us in correspondence, and the notes we take about it, including any answer you give and any request to stop.
• Visits to this site. There are no cookies here and no analytics script. The host of the site keeps the routine technical logs every web host keeps, such as the requesting IP address and the page served. The page's lettering comes from an outside font provider, which sees the visitor's IP address when it delivers the font file.

We neither seek nor want sensitive personal information: nothing on health, religion, politics, sexual orientation, government identifiers or private finances. Should someone volunteer such a thing, we keep it no longer than the conversation itself needs.

Origins of the information

Business information reaches us by three routes. One is public material: employer websites, listings of open positions, news coverage and professional networking profiles. Another is commercial business-data providers, who supply contact and company records under terms of their own. The third is you yourself: an answer to an email, the form on affinitysearchpartners.com, or a conversation by phone or in person.

Purposes

We put the information to the following purposes and no others:

• Weighing whether our services are likely to matter to a person and their employer before any approach is made.
• Approaching the person at work, by email and now and then by phone or letter.
• Confirming that an email address can accept mail ahead of a send, so that less of our mail goes astray.
• Answering anyone who writes or calls, and, where invited, discussing or delivering our search services.
• Maintaining the stop list so that every request to stop is honoured.
• Keeping our systems secure and meeting our legal duties.

Open tracking is something we do not do. We keep no record of whether an email was opened.

Ending contact

Answer any of our emails, in whatever wording suits you, and say you want nothing further. If the approach was by phone, tell the caller. No form, no login, no account. We act on the request promptly and in every case inside 10 business days.

Once you have told us to stop, your name and email address are placed on our stop list, our record of everyone who has told us no, and they remain there. Its purpose is to make sure we never approach you again, whatever source your details might later arrive from. That is the reason the entry itself is retained even when you ask us to erase everything else.

Disclosure

Nobody buys personal information from us and nobody rents it. Other companies do not receive it for their own marketing, and it never feeds targeted advertising.

Disclosure happens in three narrow cases. First, to providers acting for us: the services that send, receive and host our email, the services that check whether an address is live, the business-data providers we buy from, and the hosting and storage companies behind our systems and files. Each is permitted to use it solely in delivering that service to us. Second, to public bodies or courts where a law compels it, or where it takes disclosure to protect the rights, property or safety of Affinity Search Partners, our clients or anyone else. Third, to a buyer or successor should the business, or the relevant part of it, change hands or be reorganised; the new owner takes the information subject to this policy.

Keeping and discarding

Contact and employer information stays with us while it remains useful to the work, and we discard records that are no longer current, for instance a person who has moved on from the employer we recorded. Client files stay for the life of the engagement and then for whatever period accounting and legal duties demand. Stop-list entries remain as long as business outreach continues at all, since nothing shorter would let the list do its job.

Safeguards

Only the people whose work needs it can get at the information, and we apply precautions that are sensible for a firm of our size and for the kind of information involved. No method of storing or moving data is beyond compromise, and we do not promise ours is. We make no representation about any particular technical measure.

Your requests and how to make them

You may ask which of your details we hold and where each came from. You may have them corrected. You may have them erased, apart from your stop-list entry, which we retain so that erasure does not lead to a fresh approach.

The state you live in may add rights of its own, for example a right to know what is held, to correct it, to erase it, and to decline any selling or sharing of your details for targeted advertising. Because selling and sharing in that sense are things we do not do, there is nothing to decline, though you are welcome to ask all the same. Nobody is treated differently for making a request.

Requests can come by answering one of our emails, through the form at affinitysearchpartners.com/contact, or by letter to the address above. To be sure we act on the right record, we may ask you to confirm the address our email went to. We answer within the period the governing law lays down. Someone you have authorised can act for you, and we may ask to see evidence of that authority.

Minors

Our services are for employers and the people who work for them. The site is not aimed at children, and nothing is knowingly gathered about anyone below 18. Tell us if you believe we hold such information and we will remove it.

Location

Affinity Search Partners works from Tennessee and does business inside the United States. The providers named above handle data in whatever locations their operations run, which may lie outside your own state or country.

Revisions

A revised policy is published on this page with a new effective date in its heading. Whatever version is on this page at a given moment is the one in force.

Reaching us

Questions and requests about this policy go to:

Affinity Search Partners
5115 Maryland Way, Suite 121, Brentwood, TN 37027

You may instead answer any email of ours, or use the form on our main site at affinitysearchpartners.com/contact.