Gratus Staffing LLC · Rockville, Maryland · United States
Gratus Staffing LLC ("Gratus Staffing," "we," "our," or "us") is a boutique executive search firm specializing in Finance and Accounting leadership placements across Real Estate, Private Equity, Financial Services, and Healthcare. We are a limited liability company organized under the laws of the State of Maryland, with our principal place of business in Rockville, Maryland.
This Privacy Policy governs the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information through our website located at www.gratusstaffing.com (the “Site”) and the tools and resources available on it.
This policy applies to users located in the United States. Our Site is not directed at individuals outside the United States, and we do not knowingly market to or collect data from non-U.S. residents.
This policy does not govern the personal information we collect in the course of our recruiting engagements conducted on behalf of client companies. That data is governed by separate engagement agreements and applicable employment laws.
Our Executive Offer Evaluator tool is designed to help senior Finance and Accounting professionals evaluate job offers. When you complete and submit the tool, we collect the following information solely to improve our compensation benchmarks:
What we do NOT store from the Offer Evaluator: We do not store your name, email address, phone number, exact salary figures, employer name, or any other information that could be used to identify you individually. This data collection is designed to be non-identifying by construction.
What OfferAlign is: OfferAlign is a confidential candidate compensation assessment service offered by Gratus Staffing. Employers engaged in a search can invite shortlisted candidates to complete a secure profile through a unique link. The candidate's responses are used solely to generate an alignment score and offer recommendations for that specific search.
Candidates who complete an OfferAlign assessment voluntarily provide:
The OfferAlign form does not collect a candidate's last name, home address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, or any government-issued identification. Candidates may complete the assessment entirely without providing a name or email address.
Employers never see raw candidate responses. Employers receive only: (1) a numeric alignment score from 1–100 derived from the candidate's responses; and (2) general offer recommendations (e.g., "A sign-on bonus may be needed to offset an equity retention cost") that do not contain specific figures or personally identifying information. No salary figures, exact compensation data, or verbatim candidate responses are transmitted to or viewable by the employer.
Employers or hiring teams who request OfferAlign through our website provide: their name, email address, company name, job title, role details, and general notes. This information is used solely to set up the assessment and communicate about the engagement. It is retained for 24 months and is never sold.
Candidates who provided an email address may request deletion of their OfferAlign submission at any time by contacting privacy@gratusstaffing.com. Candidates who completed the assessment anonymously (without providing a name or email) cannot be individually identified in our records, and as a result, specific submissions cannot be located or deleted. This is by design and serves as an additional privacy protection.
This information is collected and processed by Google Analytics 4. We do not combine this automatically collected data with the personal information you provide through our forms.
We use your contact information to respond to your inquiry, evaluate potential recruiting engagements, and correspond with you about our services. We do not add form submitters to marketing email lists without separate consent. We do not sell, rent, or share your contact information with third parties for their marketing purposes.
We use your email address to deliver the requested resource and may follow up once regarding our recruiting services. You may opt out of any follow-up communication by replying to any email with “unsubscribe” in the subject line, or by contacting us at info@gratusstaffing.com.
We use Google Analytics data to understand how visitors use our Site, which pages are most useful, and how we can improve the user experience. We do not use analytics data to build individual user profiles or for advertising targeting.
Our Site uses the following third-party services that may collect or process personal data. Where applicable, these parties act as data processors under our instructions:
Contact, candidate, and salary guide download forms on our Site are processed by Formspree, Inc., acting as a data processor on our behalf. Form submissions (including name, email, phone, and any message content) are transmitted to and temporarily stored on Formspree’s servers before being delivered to us. Formspree’s privacy policy is available at formspree.io/legal/privacy-policy. We retain form submission data in our own systems for the purpose of responding to inquiries and managing recruiting engagements.
We use Google Analytics 4 to collect and analyze aggregated information about Site usage. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect data including anonymized IP addresses, browser information, and behavior patterns. We have enabled IP anonymization in our Google Analytics configuration. Google may use this data in accordance with its own privacy policy, available at policies.google.com/privacy. You can opt out of Google Analytics tracking by installing the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on.
Anonymized benchmarking data submitted through the Offer Evaluator is transmitted to and stored in a Google Sheets spreadsheet owned and controlled by Gratus Staffing LLC, via Google Apps Script. This data contains no personally identifiable information. Google’s privacy policy governs Google’s handling of data processed through its infrastructure.
Our Site is hosted on Netlify. Netlify may collect access logs including IP addresses for security and performance purposes. Netlify’s privacy policy is available at netlify.com/privacy.
Our Site loads fonts from Google Fonts, which may result in your browser sending a request (including IP address) to Google’s servers. We do not control this data collection. See Google’s privacy policy for details.
Our Site uses cookies — small text files stored in your browser — and similar tracking technologies. The technologies used on our Site include:
Google Analytics sets cookies (including _ga, _gid, and _ga_[ID]) to distinguish unique visitors and track sessions. These cookies do not contain personally identifiable information on their own, but the data they collect is processed by Google as described in Section 5. We have enabled IP anonymization in our Analytics configuration.
We use browser session storage — which is distinct from cookies and is stored locally in your browser only — on our interactive tools to temporarily save your progress within a single browsing session. This data is never transmitted to our servers and is automatically deleted when you close the browser tab.
We honor the Global Privacy Control (GPC) browser signal as a valid opt-out of any sale or sharing of personal information, to the extent required by applicable state law. If your browser transmits a GPC signal when you visit our Site, we will treat it as a request to opt out. Because we do not sell or share personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, GPC signals do not alter how your data is processed on our Site.
You can control and delete cookies through your browser settings. Disabling analytics cookies may limit our ability to improve our Site but will not affect your ability to use it. Most browsers allow you to:
Gratus Staffing LLC does not sell, rent, trade, or otherwise transfer your personal information to third parties for monetary consideration or any other valuable consideration. We do not “share” personal information as that term is defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (i.e., for cross-context behavioral advertising purposes). We do not share your personal information with third parties for their direct marketing purposes.
We may share personal information only in the following limited circumstances:
Service providers: With our data processors (Formspree, Google, Netlify) solely as necessary to provide the services described in this policy, and subject to appropriate data processing and confidentiality obligations.
Recruiting engagements: With client companies in the context of an active recruiting engagement, but only with your knowledge and consent as part of that process — this is the core function of our executive search business.
Legal process: As required by law, if we are required to disclose information in response to a lawful subpoena, court order, or other legal process.
Business transfers: In connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of substantially all of our assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. In that event, we will provide notice via a prominent posting on our Site prior to the transfer and will require the successor entity to comply with this Privacy Policy or provide equivalent protections.
Applicability Note: The specific state-law rights described below apply only to the extent you qualify as a “consumer” or “resident” under those laws, and only to the extent Gratus Staffing LLC meets the applicable processing thresholds or is otherwise subject to those statutes. We have chosen to honor these rights for all U.S. users regardless of applicable thresholds as a matter of best practice.
Right to know: You may request information about what personal data we hold about you, the categories of sources from which it was collected, and the purposes for which it is used.
Right to delete: You may request deletion of personal data we hold about you, subject to certain exceptions (e.g., data necessary to complete a transaction or comply with a legal obligation).
Right to correct: You may request that we correct inaccurate personal data we hold about you.
Right to data portability: Where technically feasible, you may request a copy of personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
Right to opt out of analytics: You may opt out of Google Analytics data collection using the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-on (see Section 5).
If you are a California resident and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), applies to your interactions with us, you have additional rights including:
California residents may submit requests by contacting us at the address in Section 13. We will respond within 45 days of receipt. We may extend this period by an additional 45 days where reasonably necessary, with prior notice.
California’s “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code §1798.83) permits California residents to request information about personal information shared with third parties for direct marketing purposes. We do not share personal information with third parties for direct marketing, and therefore no such disclosure is required.
To the extent the Maryland Online Data Privacy Act (MODPA, effective October 1, 2025) applies to your personal data processed by us, you have rights including access, correction, deletion, portability, and opt-out of certain processing activities (including profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects). To submit a request, contact us as described in Section 13. We will respond within 45 days, with a possible 45-day extension where reasonably necessary.
You may designate an authorized agent to submit privacy requests on your behalf. We will require the authorized agent to provide written proof of your authorization and may verify your identity directly before processing the request.
If we decline to act on your privacy request, you have the right to appeal our decision. To submit an appeal, contact us at info@gratusstaffing.com with the subject line “Privacy Request Appeal” and include a description of the request we declined and the basis for your appeal. We will respond to appeals within 45 days and will provide an explanation of our decision. If your appeal is denied, you may contact your applicable state Attorney General’s office.
To exercise any of these rights, please contact us by email at info@gratusstaffing.com with the subject line “Privacy Request.” We will verify your identity before processing your request and will respond within the timeframes required by applicable law. We will not charge a fee for reasonable requests.
We take reasonable administrative and technical measures to protect personal information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. These measures include:
However, no method of transmission over the internet or electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. In the event of a data breach that requires notification under applicable law, we will notify affected individuals and relevant authorities as required.
Contact and candidate form submissions: We retain this information for as long as necessary to respond to your inquiry or maintain an active recruiting relationship, and for a reasonable period thereafter (generally no more than 3 years from last contact), unless a longer retention period is required by law.
Google Analytics data: Retained in Google Analytics for 14 months per our configuration, after which it is automatically deleted by Google.
Offer Evaluator benchmarking data: Retained indefinitely in aggregate form, as it contains no personal information. Individual rows may be deleted upon request, though we cannot guarantee we can locate a specific individual’s submission (as described in Section 8).
Our Site is not directed at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. Our content and services are intended exclusively for working professionals. If you believe we have inadvertently collected information from a child under 13, please contact us immediately at info@gratusstaffing.com and we will promptly delete that information.
We do not have actual knowledge that we sell or share personal information of minors under 16 years of age.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, the services we offer, or applicable law. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this page and, where required by applicable law or where we determine the changes are significant, provide more prominent notice (such as a banner on our Site or direct email notice to users whose information we hold).
We will not materially reduce your privacy rights under this policy without providing prominent advance notice. Your continued use of the Site after the updated policy is posted constitutes your acceptance of the updated terms.
If you have questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your privacy rights, or want to report a privacy-related issue, please contact us:
Email: info@gratusstaffing.com
Mail: 14660 Rothgeb Drive, Suite 202, Rockville, MD 20850
Phone: (240) 552-9846
We will make every reasonable effort to respond to privacy-related requests within 45 days of receipt.