YOWLApplicant Terms & Privacy Notice
This notice is for job applicants — people who apply to a role by emailing an application address like j22@yowl.co.za. It explains who receives your application, what we do with it, and the choices you have. Our general Terms of Use and Privacy Policy also apply.
You must be 18 or older to apply through the Platform.
1. Who receives your application
Application addresses like j22@yowl.co.za are mailboxes we host for the organisation that posted the role. Your application is made to that organisation, not to us — we route and store the email as their software provider. We do not read applications to select or shortlist candidates, we do not submit applications on anyone’s behalf, and we are not a recruitment agency. The recruiting is done by the organisation you applied to.
Your email, attachments, and the extracted CV summary are shared with that organisation on the Platform — visible to the members of its account, not only the person who posted the role.
For the application in that organisation’s records, the organisation is the responsible party under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and CDSoft (Pty) Ltd acts as their operator. Questions about how they assess or retain your application should go to them.
The organisation may use AI-assisted tools, provided as part of our software, to help it review and rank applications against the role — producing a summary and a suggested ranking. These tools assist a person; they do not decide, shortlist, or reject on their own. A member of the organisation makes every decision about your application. We provide the software and process this on the organisation’s behalf; we do not score, rank, or select candidates ourselves. You have rights in relation to this assessment — see section 6.
2. What we do in our own right
Some parts of the application flow are run by us, for you. For these, CDSoft (Pty) Ltd is the responsible party:
- The consent step. If we don’t know your email address, we hold your application unprocessed and email you a link to accept these terms first.
- Your account. Accepting the terms creates a free Yowl account for you, identified by your email address. It exists so we can show you your application status and offer you the optional services below. You can ask us to delete it at any time.
- CV extraction. After consent, we extract the text of your CV into a structured summary (name, roles, skills, education) so the organisation can view your application. This uses Anthropic’s Claude API — content is processed outside South Africa under a data processing agreement, is not used to train models, and is not retained beyond the immediate response.
3. Optional services — only if you say yes
- Free CV review. If you ask for it, we read the CV you sent and email you an AI-generated review. Nothing is shared with the organisation you applied to.
- Free job-seeker profile. If the role was advertised on one of our affiliated job boards (gigz.co.za or permz.co.za — also operated by CDSoft (Pty) Ltd), we may offer to create a profile there for you, pre-filled from your extracted CV data. This only happens if you tick the box accepting that board’s own Terms and Privacy Policy — from then on your profile is governed by those documents. A new profile starts visible: it is a public web page, and members of that board and organisations using Yowl can see it and contact you. Each of these settings can be switched off at any time from your account on the board.
Declining either has no effect on your application.
4. How long we keep your data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Application received but terms never accepted | After 14 days the email content, CV, and attachments are deleted and the record is irreversibly de-identified — only anonymous statistics remain (no name, address, or message content) |
| Application in the organisation’s records | Held by the organisation as responsible party — deletion requests go to them |
| Your Yowl account | Held until you ask us to delete it; removed within 30 days of the request |
5. No fees, no guarantees
We never charge applicants anything. We do not guarantee that an application leads to an interview, offer, or employment — those decisions rest entirely with the organisation you applied to.
6. Your rights under POPIA
You may request access to, correction of, or deletion of the personal information we hold about you, object to specific processing, and lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator at inforegulator.org.za. To exercise any of these rights, contact us — we will respond within 30 days. For data in an organisation’s records, we will refer your request to the organisation and may act ourselves where the law requires.
Where an organisation uses automated tools to assess your application, you may ask it for the reasons behind an assessment, request that a person — not software alone — review any decision that significantly affects you, and object to a decision based solely on automated processing (section 71 of POPIA). These requests go to the organisation you applied to, as the responsible party.
7. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice. The version in force when you apply, or when you next use the Platform, is the one that applies. Where a change materially affects your rights, the updated notice is shown at the consent step before a new application is processed.
8. Governing law
These terms are governed by South African law. If a provision conflicts with applicable SA legislation, the legislation prevails.
Information Officer: Brent Greeff — contact us