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Human Resources

 

We recruit individuals with the right mix of talent, skills and potential and welcome applications from a wide range of candidates, including those with criminal records. We select candidates for interview based on their skills, qualifications and experience. Having a criminal record will not necessarily bar you from working with us. This will depend on the nature of the position and the circumstances of your offences. We undertake not to discriminate unfairly against applicants because of convictions, cautions, reprimands or outstanding criminal proceedings.

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is only requested by the University after a thorough assessment against the eligibility criteria prescribed by legislation and we comply fully with the DBS Code of Practice. We request basic criminal records disclosures through Disclosure Scotland (an executive agency of the Scottish Government, which provides basic disclosures to employers throughout the UK) only for certain security-sensitive posts where it is proportionate to do so. Where completion of a DBS check or basic disclosure is a condition of an offer of employment, the job advert and/or Further Information document for the vacancy will specify this requirement.

We encourage applicants for such posts to provide details of their criminal record which are not protected in law at an early stage in the application process. Details of which convictions are protected are available from the DBS website.

We will have an open and measured discussion with you on the subject any convictions, cautions, reprimands or outstanding criminal proceedings that might be relevant to the position. Failure to reveal information that is directly relevant to the position could lead to withdrawal of an offer of employment (or dismissal, if your employment has commenced).

Where you have disclosed to us that you have committed a criminal offence, or where a DBS check or basic disclosure has revealed this, we will conduct an objective assessment of the impact that this should have on your employment. The outcome of this assessment will be discussed with you.

A copy of the University's statement on the handling of conviction-related information is available from the Data Protection section of the HR web pages.