What we collect

What you type in the answers, not the CV

• Your full name and your phone number. The phone number is how we tell one person from another, so it is the one field the record cannot exist without.
• Your email address, if you gave one, and whether it looks like a real address. If you typed something that is not an email we keep the fact that you tried, not the typo.
• Your WhatsApp number, if you gave a second one. If it is the same as your phone number we throw it away rather than counting it as another way to reach you.
• Your town and your province.
• Your highest qualification and the year you finished it.
• Whether you have worked before, and the job titles you have held, up to eight of them.
• Your skills, up to twenty.
• What work you are looking for: the ones you tapped, and anything you typed in your own words.
• What you can do right now: whether you can start immediately, have transport, have your own laptop, and would move for work. All four are optional and a blank means you did not say, not that the answer is no.
• Which template you chose, what language you are reading the app in, and your CV score.

Whether we can actually reach you worked out, not asked

• Whether your number is a cellphone, a landline, a share call or an 087 number. Only a cellphone takes a WhatsApp, so this decides whether we ever message you at all.
• The network your number was issued on, worked out from the first three digits: Vodacom, MTN, Cell C, Telkom or Rain. It changes what it costs us to send you a message. Numbers can be moved between networks in South Africa, so this is where your number started and not proof of where it is now. Where the digits belong to more than one network we say so rather than guess.
• Whether the number looks made up, such as seven of the same digit in a row. We keep the row and mark it rather than pretending it is reachable.
• The time of day you usually open the app, kept as mornings, afternoons, evenings or late nights, so a message reaches you awake. We work this out from when you use CV ZA. We never ask, and we never read your clock alarms or anything else on your phone.
• The language to write to you in, which is the language you chose for the app.

Where you are town level, never a street

• The town, region and country our server works out from your internet connection when your phone talks to us. This is roughly the town you are in and never the street.
• The time zone that connection reports.
• We keep this next to the town and province you typed, because the two are often different and both are useful.

The phone you are on what the browser tells us

• Your phone model where your browser gives it, such as SM-A047F or iPhone.
• Your operating system and its version, and your browser and its version.
• Your screen size, the size of the window, and how sharp the screen is.
• Your phone language and its time zone.
• What your browser says about your connection: whether it calls itself 3g or 4g, roughly how fast it is, how long it takes to answer, and whether you have data saver switched on.
• How much memory your phone reports, whether it has a touch screen, and whether you have installed CV ZA to your home screen.
• A random id your browser makes on its first visit. It is not linked to your phone or your SIM. Its only job is to let this phone ask us for your own record without you making an account.

What you do in the app counts, not a diary

• Which pages you open, how many times, and roughly how many seconds you spend on each one.
• How many separate visits you have made and how many days you have used the app.
• What you type into the search boxes, on the home page and anywhere else we put one.
• Every time you switch template.
• How many times you use each AI button, counted per job: writing bullet points, polishing your summary, tailoring to a job advert, improving a line, writing a cover letter.
• Your CV score each time it changes, so we can see it go up.
• Roughly how many seconds you spend in each hour of the day, twenty four numbers and nothing more. This is the only thing the best time to reach you is worked out from.

The jobs you look at the part worth the most

• Every job advert that was on your screen for about a second or more.
• Every job advert you tapped.
• Every job advert you shared with somebody.
• Every job advert you followed through to the employer's own page.
• For each one we keep the advert, its title and the employer, and when you first and last touched it. We keep the last sixty.

How you found us recorded once, on your first visit

• The website that sent you, as a name like facebook.com. We keep the name of the site and never the full address, because a full address can carry what you searched for.
• Any campaign tags on the link you clicked, the utm values.
• Your own referral code and the code of the person who sent you, if a friend shared CV ZA with you.
• The job advert that brought you in, if you arrived from one.

The record itself housekeeping, not about you

• A row number for your record, when it was first written, when it was last changed and how many times it has been saved.
• The furthest step you reached in the app.
• Which build of CV ZA sent it, so a strange looking record can be traced to the version that made it.
• Whether you changed your phone number while filling the form. Your number is how we tell one record from another, so correcting it starts a new record and the old one is marked as out of date rather than left looking current. We do not message a marked record.