1. Who we are

Velocity Leadership Limited (“Velocity Leadership”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is an executive search and leadership advisory firm registered in England and Wales, company number 17303591.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your personal data, contact us at james@velocityleadership.io.

2. Who this policy is for

This policy explains how we collect and use personal data about:

• Visitors to this website;
• Candidates — people we approach, consider, assess or introduce in connection with a role, and people in our professional network;
• Clients and prospective clients, including their founders, employees and investors;
• Referees, referrers and other contacts who we speak to in the course of our work.

3. What we collect

Website visitors

• Our hosting provider records standard technical information (such as IP address, browser type and pages requested) in server logs, to deliver the site and protect it from abuse;
• The site loads fonts from Google Fonts, which means your IP address is shared with Google in order to serve those fonts;
• If you email us using a link on the site, we receive whatever information you choose to put in that email.

Candidates and network contacts

• Name and contact details (email, phone, location);
• Career history, CV, employment and education details, skills and achievements;
• Publicly available professional information, including your LinkedIn profile;
• Notes from our conversations, interviews and assessments, and our professional opinions on suitability;
• Current and expected compensation, notice period and motivations;
• References, where you have agreed to them;
• Right-to-work or immigration status, where relevant to a specific role;
• Diversity information, only where you choose to volunteer it.

Clients and prospective clients

• Name, role, business contact details;
• Details of your hiring brief, organisation and requirements;
• Correspondence and meeting notes;
• Billing and payment information.

4. Where we get your information

• Public and professional sources, such as LinkedIn, company websites, published interviews, news articles and public registers;
• Referrals and recommendations from mutual contacts, referees and others in our network;
• Our clients, where they refer you to us or share details of your application;
• Your referees, where you have agreed to a reference being taken.

If we have approached you without you contacting us first, this section explains how we are likely to have found you. You can ask us at any time, and you can ask us to stop.

5. How and why we use it

• To identify, approach and assess candidates for a role, and to introduce them to a client — our legitimate interests (and those of our clients) in providing an executive search service;
• To provide leadership advisory and VC talent partner services — performance of a contract with our client, or our legitimate interests;
• To maintain our professional network and stay in touch about relevant opportunities — our legitimate interests;
• To send updates or marketing where you have asked for them — your consent, or our legitimate interests in business-to-business communication;
• To meet legal, accounting and tax obligations — legal obligation;
• To establish, exercise or defend legal claims — our legitimate interests;
• Diversity information, where you volunteer it — your explicit consent, as this is special category data.

6. Our use of AI

We use AI tools to help us with research, note-taking, drafting and market mapping. AI supports our judgement; it does not replace it. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing where that decision would have a legal or similarly significant effect.

7. Who we share it with

• Our clients, where we are introducing or discussing you in connection with a role. We tell you before we share your details with a named client;
• Service providers who process data on our behalf, under contract — including our email and document providers, website host, and any applicant tracking or CRM tools we use;
• Professional advisers, such as our accountants or lawyers, where necessary;
• Authorities or third parties, where we are required to by law.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for third-party advertising.

8. How long we keep it

• Candidates and network contacts: normally up to two years from our last meaningful contact with you, after which we review and delete or anonymise. We keep it this long because senior hiring is cyclical and a role that suits you may arise years after we first speak;
• Clients: for the duration of our relationship, and then for six years after the end of the engagement, to meet contractual, tax and legal requirements;
• Website server logs: a short period, as set by our hosting provider, for security purposes.

You can ask us to delete your data sooner — see below.

9. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you;
• Rectify data that is inaccurate or incomplete;
• Erase your data (the “right to be forgotten”) in certain circumstances;
• Restrict how we use your data;
• Object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including profiling, and to direct marketing at any time;
• Data portability — to receive your data in a portable format;
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, email james@velocityleadership.io. It is free, and we will respond within one month. We may ask you to verify your identity first.

10. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please email james@velocityleadership.io so we can put it right. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and tell you the outcome without undue delay. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

11. Contact

Velocity Leadership Limited
Email: james@velocityleadership.io