Privacy Policy

Information We Collect

We collect information you choose to provide, including:

• Name, email address, and account credentials
• Education history, work experience, skills, and career preferences
• Optional candidate matching details — GPA, work authorization status, expected salary, and relocation willingness. These fields are never shown to companies searching the candidate pool; they are used only to help match you with relevant job postings and are visible to you in your own profile.
• Resume — visible to companies whose jobs you apply to, and, unless you turn off resume downloads in your account settings, to Pro/Premium member companies browsing the candidate pool (see “Candidate Visibility to Employers” below). Also visible to COLAB Connects staff for support purposes.
• Profile photo — visible to other signed-in users of the platform; a company's profile photo and company profile page are publicly viewable, including to visitors who are not signed in
• Employer or company profile information (for employer accounts)
• Billing information when a company makes a one-time membership payment. Memberships are a single payment, not a recurring or auto-renewing charge. Full payment card details are entered directly with our payment processor, Stripe, and are not stored on our servers.
• Messages you send or receive through the platform's messaging feature
• If you choose to sign up or log in with Google or LinkedIn: your name, email address, profile photo, and account ID from that service, along with its confirmation that your email address is verified. We do not receive your Google or LinkedIn password, and we do not access your Gmail, contacts, calendar, files, LinkedIn connections, messages, posts, or any other data in those accounts. That photo is copied into our own storage and used as your profile photo, which you can change at any time.

When you use “Fill from my resume,” we may send that resume to Anthropic, the company that makes the Claude AI model, so it can read the resume and suggest entries for your profile. Anthropic processes it only to return those suggestions and does not use it to train its AI models. When you use “Import from LinkedIn,” we read that PDF on our own servers and do not send it to any AI service; it is read once and not stored. Either way, nothing is saved to your profile until you review it and choose to save.

We also collect limited information automatically:

• IP address and request activity, used to secure accounts and prevent abuse (for example, limiting repeated login or password-reset attempts)
• Basic usage data (such as pages visited) collected through Vercel Analytics

How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• Create and maintain your COLAB Connects profile
• Match users with relevant career opportunities
• Enable employers to discover early-career talent
• Deliver messages sent between companies and candidates
• Process membership payments and manage member benefits
• Communicate important account or platform updates
• Improve platform functionality and user experience
• Secure the platform and prevent fraud or abuse

We do not share your personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes, and we do not use it for third-party advertising.

Candidate Visibility to Employers

Companies on a paid Pro or Premium membership can search and browse a pool of candidate profiles, not only candidates who applied to their job postings. If your profile is included in this pool, an employer who finds you can see your name, email address, profile photo, headline, desired location, open-to-work status, degrees, certificates, work experience, skills, and Career Forum history. Your GPA, work authorization status, expected salary, and relocation willingness are never shown to employers browsing or searching the pool — those fields stay visible only to you.

An employer can download your resume or include you in a candidate export only if you allow it. If you apply directly to one of a company's job postings, that company can always access your resume for that application regardless of this setting.

You control this from your account settings:

• Hide your profile from employer search — removes you from the searchable candidate pool for Pro/Premium employers. This does not affect companies whose jobs you've applied to.
• Resume downloads & exports — controls whether employers who find you in search can download your resume or include you in a candidate export.
• Name in company profile views — Premium employers can see the names and headlines of members who viewed their company profile. Turn this off to be counted as a private viewer instead, including for views you made before changing it.

Third-Party Service Providers

We share limited information with a small number of service providers who help us operate COLAB Connects. Each is only given the information it needs to perform its function, and none are permitted to use your data for their own purposes.

• Stripe — processes membership payments on our behalf. We do not store your full card details.
• Pusher — delivers real-time messages sent through the platform. When a company messages a candidate, that candidate's name, email address, and the message content pass through Pusher to deliver it; messages themselves are stored in our database, not Pusher's.
• Resend — sends account-related emails, such as password resets, email verification, and notification digests.
• Vercel — hosts the platform, stores uploaded profile photos and resumes, and provides basic usage analytics.
• Google — if you choose to sign in with Google, Google verifies your identity and shares your name, email address, and profile photo with us. Google learns that you are signing in to COLAB Clubhouse; its handling of your data is governed by Google's own privacy policy.
• LinkedIn — if you choose to sign in with LinkedIn, LinkedIn verifies your identity and shares your name, email address, and profile photo with us. LinkedIn learns that you are signing in to COLAB Clubhouse; its handling of your data is governed by LinkedIn's own privacy policy.

Cookies

We use a session cookie to keep you signed in to your account. Signing in with Google or LinkedIn also sets short-lived cookies that secure the sign-in and expire within minutes. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

Data Retention

We retain personal data only for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide services. You may delete your account at any time from your account settings, or by contacting us at the email address below; deleting your account removes your personal data from our systems unless retention is required by law.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Correct or update your information
• Request deletion of your account and associated data
• Disconnect Google or LinkedIn sign-in from your account, or revoke COLAB Clubhouse's access from your Google or LinkedIn account settings
• Opt out of non-essential email notifications at any time from your notification settings
• Control whether your profile appears in employer search results and whether employers can download your resume, from your account settings (see “Candidate Visibility to Employers” above)
• Withdraw consent for optional data sharing

Requests can be made by contacting us at the email address below.

Data Security

We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information from unauthorized access, loss, or misuse.

Contact Us

If you have questions or requests regarding privacy or data usage, contact us at:

Email: coordinator@colabconnects.org

COLAB Connects, 1844 N Wolcott, Chicago, IL 60622