How SilinRecruit collects, uses, and protects your personal information.
SilinRecruit is operated by Silintithia (Pty) Ltd, a South African company (the "Company", "we", "us"). Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 ("POPIA"), Silintithia is the "responsible party" for personal information collected through the platform, unless otherwise stated below. Silintithia (Pty) Ltd is registered in South Africa (CIPC registration number 2026/504695/07) and is registered with the Information Regulator. Our Information Officer is Neo Robert Kgaphola, who can be reached at neokg@silintithia.co.za (our physical address and telephone number are given on request). Our PAIA manual is available here.
Where a recruiter organisation clocks in placed workers using SilinRecruit, that organisation decides what it records and why. In that case the organisation is the responsible party for its workers' clocking records and Silintithia acts as its operator.
Registration data. Name, email address, phone number, and password hash, collected when you create an account. This is necessary to identify you and secure your account.
Profile data. For job seekers: skills, work history, education, salary expectations, availability, an optional profile photo, and, only with your explicit, separate consent, your B-BBEE status. This is used solely to match you against recruiter requisitions. For recruiters: organisation details and role, used to manage your account and billing.
Who can see my profile. While your profile is visible, verified recruiters on SilinRecruit can find and unlock it. Once a recruiter unlocks your profile they also see your photo, if you added one. Your photo is never shown in search results. You can also share a personal profile link (for example on WhatsApp). Anyone you send that link to can open it without an account and see your name, photo (if you added one), role, skills, work history and education. It never shows your phone number, email, salary expectations or B-BBEE status. The link is unguessable and is not indexed by search engines. It stops working, and shows only "This profile is private", as soon as you hide your profile.
Usage data. Pages visited, searches performed, and actions taken on the platform. Used to operate the service, prevent abuse, and improve matching quality.
Weekly questions and interview practice. If you answer the weekly "Get To Know You Friday" questions, we store your answers and a short set of work-style tags derived from them (for example "collaborative"). These tags may be used in matching. If you use the AI interview practice, we store your practice answers and the feedback you received so you can track your progress.
Workplace clock-in data. If your employer or agency uses SilinRecruit to record attendance, we record the time of each clock-in and clock-out and, where your device shares it, your GPS location at that moment so it can be compared with the work site. We do not track your location at any other time.
Payment data. Subscription and PAYG payments are processed by PayFast. SilinRecruit does not store your card details. PayFast handles this under its own security and privacy terms.
Company verification. If a recruiter organisation chooses to verify, we collect its company registration number, trading name, website and, optionally, a copy of its CIPC certificate. The certificate is stored privately and is seen only by the Silintithia staff who check it.
Hiring activity. When a recruiter adds you to a pipeline, their team may keep notes, scorecards and a stage for you, which only that organisation's team sees. You see a plain status in "My applications" (for example "In consideration" or "Not selected" with a reason category), never the notes or ratings. If an organisation proposes an interview, we store the proposed times, your reply and the confirmed time, and email you both a calendar invite and reminders.
References. If you save referees, we store their name, relationship, company and email. We contact them only after you approve a request. When a referee answers, we store their answers for the organisation that asked. You do not see them. A referee does not need an account, and their link works once.
Offer letters. If an organisation sends you an offer, we store the letter, whether you opened it, and, if you accept, your typed name, the time, your IP address, your device details and a fingerprint of the letter, together with a signed PDF. You and the organisation can both download it.
Learnerships and internships. An organisation that runs a programme can record programme details and export a participant list (name, ID number, dates, stipend, hours and status) for its own SETA reporting. In that case the organisation decides what it records and why, and Silintithia is its operator.
People added by an organisation (talent pool import). A recruiter organisation can upload a list of people it already holds details for. For each person we keep only the email address, first and last name, current role, location, skills, years of experience, availability and a short work history summary, plus the organisation's private tags, source and note. We do not keep phone numbers, ID numbers or other sensitive details even if they are in the file, and we do not keep the file itself, only its name, a fingerprint, the date and counts. Those details are visible only to the organisation that uploaded them. We email the person once, and send up to two reminders, with a link to claim the profile, to say it is not them, or to ask never to be contacted. We keep a one-way scrambled version of the address (not the address itself) so we can honour a refusal and do not add or email the person again. The organisation is the responsible party for the details it uploads and Silintithia acts as its operator for the upload, the invitation email and the list. When the person claims the profile, they become a job seeker like any other: they stay hidden from search until they give consent, and the organisation that added them can see the profile until the person removes it.
Endorsements. A recruiter you've dealt with may write an endorsement for your profile. We show it only after you approve it, and you can hide or remove it at any time. Recruiters who haven't unlocked your profile see a badge and a count only. Recruiters who unlock it also see the text and the endorser's name, job title and organisation. If you are a recruiter writing an endorsement, we show that information to the job seeker and to recruiters who unlock the profile, and you can withdraw the endorsement at any time.
B-BBEE / Employment Equity status is sensitive information that South African hiring legitimately needs to consider. We collect it only from job seekers who choose to disclose it, with a separate, explicit consent step. It is used exclusively to power matching and Employment Equity reporting for recruiters. It is never sold, never shared with third parties for any other purpose, and you may decline to disclose it or withdraw it at any time without affecting your ability to use the platform.
Recruiters on Professional and Enterprise can see an equity summary: counts of hires by B-BBEE group, only from profiles that have given consent. A group of fewer than five people is never shown as a number, so no individual can be picked out. The summary is not an official Employment Equity submission, and we do not collect gender or disability information.
We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active. If you request deletion, we retain a minimal record (sufficient to comply with legal obligations, such as financial records for tax purposes) for up to 12 months after your deletion request, after which it is permanently removed from our systems.
Payment and invoice records are kept for five years, as South African tax law requires. Encrypted backups of our database are kept for a limited rolling period and are overwritten as they age out, so deleted information can remain in a backup for a short time before it is overwritten.
Reports, support access and endorsements. Closed reports: 24 months after closing (12 months if dismissed). Support access logs: 3 years. Endorsements: until the profile is deleted or the endorsement is removed.
Talent pool imports. People who do not claim their profile: deleted 60 days after the invitation email (7 days if the email bounced). If someone says "This is not me" or "Do not contact me again", we delete their details at once. We then keep the scrambled address for 12 months (for "This is not me") or until we are told otherwise (for "Do not contact me again"), only to avoid contacting them again. Records of each upload (who uploaded, when, the file name and counts, and the organisation's confirmation) are kept for three years.
Hiring records. Company certificates: deleted 12 months after the organisation is archived or deleted. Reference answers: 12 months after the reference check is completed. Signed offer letters: the organisation's copy for five years after the placement ends (or after acceptance, if the person was never placed), and your signed copy stays available to you while you have an account. Offers that were not signed: 12 months after the last change. Interviews: 12 months after the interview date.
You have the right to:
Reports. If another user reports you or your organisation, we keep the report, any evidence and our review notes to investigate misuse and protect users. Reports are confidential and we don't share the reporter's identity. Before acting, we will normally tell you what is alleged and let you respond, unless there is an urgent safety or legal reason not to. Where POPIA allows, we may withhold details that would identify the reporter if you ask for access to the report.
Job seekers can manage consent and visibility directly from the Privacy Settings page in their dashboard. Toggling visibility off takes effect immediately. For any other request (access, correction, deletion, or a general query about your data), email support@silintithia.co.za. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, and we aim to respond within 30 days.
Complaints. If you believe we have handled your personal information unlawfully, please contact us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za, enquiries@inforegulator.org.za, 010 023 5200 or 0800 017 160, Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191, inforegulator.org.za.
We use session cookies to keep you logged in and functioning cookies to remember your preferences (such as your active organisation, for recruiters). We use minimal analytics to understand how the platform is used in aggregate. This data is not used to build advertising profiles, and we do not sell it to third parties.
PayFast: our payment processor, for subscription and PAYG billing. PayFast receives only the information needed to process a payment.
Anthropic (Claude API): our AI provider. It processes (a) the text of a recruiter's requisition description, and (b) text you choose to submit to the AI tools for job seekers (job-fit scoring, cover letters, CV optimisation and interview practice). For those tools we send the relevant parts of your profile (current role, years of experience, location, availability, summary, skills, work history including employer names, and education), the job description or answers you provide, and the Friday work-style tags. Your name is sent only to the cover letter tool, so the letter can be addressed from you. We do not send your email address, phone number, ID number or photo. Anthropic does not use API data to train its models. We never use AI to make a final hiring decision; recruiters make their own decisions.
CV import. When you upload a CV to fill in your profile, we read the text on our server, remove your email address, phone number and ID number, and send the rest to our AI provider, Anthropic, to pull out your work history, education and skills. We don't keep the file. You review everything before it is saved.
Referees. A referee you name receives an email with a private link that shows your name and the organisation asking. The organisation sees their answers, and Silintithia staff may see them only to deal with a complaint or a misuse report. We do not share them with anyone else.
Hosting and backups: SilinRecruit and its database are hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in South Africa (Johannesburg Central region). Encrypted database backups are stored with Backblaze (B2).
We do not sell personal information. We may disclose it where the law requires us to, for example in response to a court order.
Support access. Authorised Silintithia staff may open your account, or your organisation's account, to give support, fix problems and keep the platform safe. Each session needs a recorded reason, is time-limited and is logged. You can see these entries in your account settings. We do not use support access to see your password or your payment or bank details.
Our primary database and application servers are in South Africa. Some of the providers above process information outside South Africa (our AI provider and our backup provider). Where we send personal information abroad, we do so only to providers that are bound by contract to protect it to a standard comparable to POPIA, as section 72 of POPIA requires, and only the information needed for the purpose described. By using the platform you acknowledge these transfers.
If we discover a security breach that puts your personal information at risk, we will notify the Information Regulator and affected people as soon as reasonably possible, as POPIA requires.
We use industry-standard measures including encrypted connections (HTTPS) for all data in transit, hashed password storage, and access controls limiting who at Silintithia can view personal information. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat your data with the same care we'd want applied to our own.
We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated effective date at the top of this page. Continued use of SilinRecruit after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.
Questions about this policy or your data can be sent to support@silintithia.co.za, or via the contact form.