Terms of use

Backed is a shared talent network. It is used by partner organisations (charities, colleges, councils, probation and health services and other referrers) and their staff, by verified employers, by the people those organisations support, and by the network team that runs it. By signing in you agree to these terms. Employers also agree to the acceptable-use terms.

• Consent first. A person’s profile starts hidden and is shared only as they choose, section by section. Nothing on the network is public or indexed by search engines.
• People are pooled, relationships are not. No partner organisation can see another’s employer list.
• Contributions buy capacity, never ranking. Credits change how many people an organisation can publish, and never how anyone is matched or ordered.
• Background is positive action only. Special category information is opt-in per tag, shown only to employers with a matching commitment, and never a filter or score.
• Everything sensitive is audited. Every view and filter of sensitive information is recorded and reviewed.

Your account is yours alone. Keep your password private, sign out on shared devices, and tell your team admin straight away if you think someone else has used it. Team admins must deactivate the accounts of colleagues who leave on the day they leave.

We may suspend an account or an organisation that breaks these terms, the acceptable-use terms, or the law — immediately where someone’s safety or privacy is at stake. Suspension takes effect on the next request.

• Copy, screenshot, download, scrape or share any candidate’s information outside the network.
• Contact a candidate directly when the network routes contact through their support worker.
• Use anything you learn about a person’s background for any purpose other than the support commitment you declared.
• Try to work out a person’s background from what is hidden, from the organisation supporting them, or from match scores.
• Attempt to access another organisation’s people, employers, messages or records, or to test the network’s security without written permission.
• Enter information about a person that they have not seen.

Partner organisations are responsible for the information their staff enter about the people they support, and for entering it with the person, never about them. Employers are responsible for their own vacancy, commitment and pipeline information. The network operator does not check the accuracy of what you enter, but may remove content that breaks these terms.

Where optional AI features are switched on, they draft wording from what you type and never invent facts. You must read and approve every draft before it is saved.

How personal information is used is set out in the privacy notice, which is part of these terms. Partner organisations and the network operator are each controllers for the parts described there; employers are controllers for their own pipeline records and must have their own lawful basis for them.

We aim to keep the service available at all times but cannot promise it. We may change or withdraw features with reasonable notice, and will always give you a way to export your organisation’s data before a withdrawal.

The service is provided as it stands. To the extent the law allows, the network operator is not liable for losses arising from information entered by other users, from an employer’s hiring decisions, or from events outside its reasonable control. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything that cannot be limited by law.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. We may update them; the date at the top of the page changes when we do, and material changes are announced in the app before they take effect. Continuing to use the service after that date means you accept the new terms.

Related: acceptable use · accessibility statement · how impact figures are calculated.