• Recruitment Experience Survey

    Are experienced women being overlooked by recruitment technology?

  • ENCORE is gathering evidence about the online recruitment experiences of women aged 45 and over.

    We will share the results with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to inform its code of practice on AI and automated decision-making. The survey takes about 10 minutes. The more questions you can answer, the stronger the evidence we can share on behalf of women like you. Thank you.

  • Please read the privacy notice before continuing.

    Who we are :
    This survey is run by Her Encore. Her Encore is the controller of your survey answers, which means we decide how they are used. If you have any questions about your data, please contact us at admin@her-encore.uk Our research partner, FITH Futures, analyses the answers on our behalf. FITH Futures acts as our processor under a written agreement. It can only use your answers to carry out this analysis for us, and cannot use them for anything else.

    Who can take part :
    This survey is for women aged 45 and over who live in the UK and have applied for at least one UK-based job online in the last three years. If you don’t meet these criteria, the survey will end and your answers will not be kept.

    What we collect
    • Your answers to the survey questions: your age group, years of experience, any career breaks, your experience of online job applications and automated recruitment tools, your views on how age and sex affect recruitment, and what you think should change.

    • All questions are multiple choice. We do not ask for your name, contact details or any information about your health.

    • To keep out automated and repeat submissions, our survey platform logs your IP address and may place a cookie on your device to detect multiple responses from the same browser or network.
    • At the end of the survey we ask you to create your own 6-digit code. This lets you withdraw your answers later without giving us your name. Please don’t use your date of birth, phone number or a PIN you use for anything else.

    Why we use your answers:
    • To prepare evidence for the ICO for its work on AI and automated decisionmaking in recruitment. The ICO may publish our response in full or in summary.
    • In Her Encore’s campaigning, for example in communications with MPs, employers and the media. In both cases we only use overall results, such as totals and percentages. Individual answers are never published, and we don’t report results for any group of fewer than 10 people. We will not use your answers for marketing or for any other purpose.

    Our lawful basis:
    We rely on your consent (Article 6(1)(a) UK GDPR), which you give at the start of the survey.

    Who handles your answers:
    • Jotform, our survey platform, collects and stores your answers for us.
    • FITH Futures, our research partner, receives a copy of the answers to analyse.
    • Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI assistant, which FITH Futures uses to help clean and analyse the data (Claude Pro, using Claude Opus 5.5).
    Before anything is uploaded, withdrawal codes, timestamps, IP addresses and any other identifiers are removed. Claude is used with memory and model training switched off. Each of these organisations handles your answers only on our instructions and under contract. The ICO and anyone else receive only overall, anonymised results.

    Where your answers are stored:
    Your answers are stored by Jotform in Google Cloud data centres in Iowa (US) and Frankfurt (Germany). Anthropic processes data in The United States, or other countries outside the EEA and UK. Where data is transferred outside the UK, it is protected by the UK-US data bridge (the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework) for Jotform, and by Standard Contractual Clauses with the ICO’s International Data Transfer Addendum (UK Addendum), as set out in the Data Processing Addendum, for Anthropic.

    How long we keep your answers:
    FITH Futures deletes its copy within 30 days of Her Encore signing off the findings. Her Encore deletes your individual answers after 12 months. We keep the overall, anonymised results, which can’t identify you.

    Changing your mind:
    You can withdraw your answers at any time until 13.11.2026 by emailing admin@her-encore.uk with the 6-digit code you created at the end of the survey. We will delete your answers and confirm by email within one month. After 13.11.2026, your answers will have been combined with others for analysis and can’t be removed from the results.

    Your rights:
    You have the right to see the data we hold about you, to correct it, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to withdraw your consent. To use any of these rights, email admin@her-encore.uk. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk/make-acomplaint or on 0303 123 1113.

    Sharing your story:
    After submitting the survey, you’ll be offered a link to share your story on the Encore website. This is separate from the survey and is covered by its own privacy notice. Your story is not connected to your survey answers.

    Changes to this notice:
    If we change how we use your answers, we will update this notice and the date at the top. As we don’t hold your contact details, we can’t tell you about changes directly, so please check this page from time to time.

  • Privacy consent*

  • Section A - About you

    Questions 1 to 5 are about you.
  • 1 - Are you a woman aged 45 or older? (select one)*
  • Do you live in the UK?*
  • 2 - Have you applied for at least one UK-based job online in the last three years? (select one)*
  • 3 - Which age group are you in? (select one)*
  • 4 - How many years of relevant professional experience do you have? (select one)*
  • 5 - Have you had a gap or break? (tick all that apply)*

  • Section B - Your applications and outcomes

    Questions 6 to 10 ask about the last 12 months. Questions 11 to 14 ask about the last three years.
  • 6 - Approximately how many jobs have you applied for online in the last 12 months? (select one)*
  • 7. Approximately how many of those online applications resulted in each of the following? (Select ONE answer for EACH row) *
    Rows
  • 8. Thinking about applications where you believed you met all the essential job requirements, how often were you rejected before speaking to a recruiter or hiring manager? (select one)
  • 9. Have you received a rejection within hours of submitting an online application, including overnight? (select one)*
  • 10. When rejected following an online application, were you given a specific reason? (select one)*
  • 11. In the last three years, have you ever been rejected after applying online for a role, but later secured an interview for that SAME role through another route? (tick all that apply)*
  • 12. When you secured the interview, had you provided substantially the same CV, qualifications and experience as in your original online application? (select one)*
  • 13. What was the outcome? (Select one, if this happened more than once, choose the furthest stage you reached.)*
  • 14. After applying for a job, have you experienced any of the following? (Select all that apply)*

  • Section C - Age, experience and career history

  • 15. In the last three years, have you deliberately changed your CV or online application to reduce the likelihood of being judged on your age? (select one)*
  • 16. What did you change? (tick all that apply)*
  • 17. After making those changes, did you notice a difference in the number of positive responses? (select one)*
  • 18. Have you encountered any of the following when completing online applications? (tick all that apply)*
  • 19. Have you ever been unable to complete, or decided to abandon, an application because of these requirements? (select one)*

  • Section D - Automated recruitment and safeguards

  • 20. In the last 12 months, which of the following have you encountered when applying for jobs online? (tick all that apply)*
  • 21. In the last 12 months, have you ever been explicitly informed that AI or automated software was used to assess, score, rank or reject your application? (select one)*
  • 22. When you were rejected after applying online, were you told you could ask for a person to review the decision? (select one)*
  • 23. If you believe an automated system rejected your application, what makes you believe this? (tick all that apply)*
  • 24. In the last 12 months, have you participated in an AI-assisted or recorded video interview? (select one)*
  • 25. In the last 12 months, were you told that AI would analyse any of the following? (tick all that apply)*
  • 26. Thinking about your online applications, what information or opportunities were available to you? (Select one answer for each row)*
    Rows
  • 27. Have you ever requested feedback, an explanation or a review of a rejection following an online application? (select one)*
  • 28. If yes - What happened? (tick all that apply)*
  • 29. If no - If you did not ask for feedback, an explanation or a review, why not? (tick all that apply)*

  • Section E - Your experience of age and sex in recruitment

  • 30. Based on your recruitment experiences, have you felt that any of the following negatively affected your chances of progressing? (tick all that apply)*
  • 31. Have you ever experienced a recruitment situation where you believed a male applicant of a similar age was treated more favourably? (select one)*

  • Section F - What needs to change

  • 32. Which changes would most improve your confidence in AI and automated recruitment? (Select up to five)*

  • Section G - Permission to use your answers

  • 33. How may ENCORE use your survey responses in its submissions to regulators and government? (select one)*
  • 34. May ENCORE also use anonymised extracts from your answers in other campaigning, such as communications with MPs, employers or the media? (select one)*

  • Thank you for your interest in the Her Encore Recruitment Experience Survey.

    This survey is specifically designed to capture the experiences of women aged 45+ and based in the UK, so it ends here.

    We appreciate your understanding.

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