01Who we are and what this covers
BenchScout (“BenchScout”, “we”, “us”) runs a marketplace at benchscout.org where sales professionals (“Talent”) are evaluated on real evidence and hiring teams (“Businesses”) search for them. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have.
It applies to the BenchScout website and app, and to anything you send us by email. For most of the information described here, BenchScout is the controller (the party deciding how and why it is used). For recordings and documents that Talent upload, see Evidence you upload because those contain other people's information too.
02Information we collect
Information you give us
- Account details: name, email address, password (stored hashed by our authentication provider), account type (Talent or Business), and profile photo.
- Talent profile: headline, bio, role and specialisation, country, city, time zone, years of experience, languages, skills, markets you can cover, availability, work setup, compensation model and rate range, work history, and visibility preferences (including blocked company domains).
- References: the name, relationship and contact email of people you list as references. Only add someone if you are comfortable with us contacting them, and we ask you to approve each reference before we do.
- Evidence: call recordings, attainment records, written outreach samples, certificates and similar files, plus the details you add about them (for example call type, stage and outcome).
- Business details: company name, domain, team members, briefs describing roles you are hiring for, saved searches and shortlists.
- Messages you send to other users through BenchScout, and anything you send to our support team.
Information created when you use BenchScout
- Evaluations: transcripts and speech metrics derived from recordings (such as talk ratio, words per minute and question count), rubric scores, confidence levels, reviewer notes and the links between each score and the evidence behind it.
- Activity records: searches, profile views, shortlisting and recording plays by Businesses; sign-in events; and basic technical data such as IP address, browser, device and pages requested, used for security and to keep the service running.
- Subscription and payment status: your plan, billing period and Stripe customer and payment identifiers. We do not receive or store full card numbers.
Information from others
- Sign-in providers: if you choose Google sign-in, we receive your name, email address and profile photo from Google.
- References and verifiers: responses from people you nominate, and confirmation of employment or experience where we verify it.
03How we use information
| Purpose | What we use | Legal basis (where GDPR / UK GDPR applies) |
|---|---|---|
| Provide the marketplace: accounts, profiles, search, messaging, shortlists, briefs | Account, profile, business and message data | Contract |
| Evaluate Talent and produce evidence-backed scores | Evidence, transcripts, references, experience | Contract, and consent for evidence that contains recordings |
| Take payment and manage subscriptions | Subscription and payment data | Contract; legal obligation (tax and accounting) |
| Keep BenchScout secure and prevent fraud or abuse | Technical and activity data | Legitimate interests |
| Improve and debug the product; measure what works | Usage and technical data | Legitimate interests |
| Send service messages (verification, receipts, security and policy notices) | Email address and account data | Contract; legitimate interests |
| Comply with law and respond to lawful requests | As required | Legal obligation |
We don't use your information for advertising, and we don't sell it or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
04How evaluations work
Every score on BenchScout is required to point back to at least one piece of evidence, and scores are written only by BenchScout systems and reviewers, never by Talent or Businesses. Evaluation combines rubric-based review by BenchScout staff with automated tools such as speech transcription and analysis. Where an outside provider is used to transcribe or analyse evidence, it acts as our processor under contract and may not use your data for its own purposes.
BenchScout does not make hiring decisions. Scores are an input for Businesses, who decide for themselves whether to contact, interview or hire someone. If you are Talent and believe a score is wrong or unfair, email privacy@benchscout.org and a person will review it.
05Evidence you upload
Call recordings and documents often contain information about other people, such as the prospect or colleague on the call, or a former employer's figures. If you are Talent, before you upload anything you must:
- have the right to share it, including any consent required by recording laws where the call took place;
- remove or redact anything you are not permitted to share, such as confidential customer data, card details or health information; and
- confirm this in the consent attestation we ask for on each upload.
We record each consent, and you can withdraw it at any time from your profile. Withdrawing stops future use of that item and removes it from your profile; see Retention for what happens to derived scores. Recordings are only played to Businesses on paid plans, and those plays are logged.
07International transfers
BenchScout is used around the world and our providers may process data in countries other than your own, including the United States. Where we transfer personal information out of the UK, EEA or Switzerland, we rely on an adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses.
08Retention
- Account and profile: kept while your account is open. When you delete your account we delete or anonymise your profile, evidence and messages within 30 days, except as below.
- Evidence and transcripts: kept until you delete them or close your account. If you withdraw consent, the file is removed and its transcript deleted; scores that already relied on it are re-reviewed or retired.
- Payment and tax records: kept for the period required by tax and accounting law, typically seven years.
- Security and audit logs: kept for up to 12 months unless needed to investigate an incident.
- Backups: deleted data may remain in encrypted backups for up to 35 days before being overwritten.
09Your rights and choices
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you and get a copy;
- correct inaccurate information (most of it you can edit directly in your profile and settings);
- delete your information and close your account;
- restrict or object to certain uses, including uses based on legitimate interests;
- receive your data in a portable format;
- withdraw consent at any time, without affecting earlier processing;
- ask for human review of a score or evaluation that affects you; and
- complain to your local data protection authority.
To exercise a right, email privacy@benchscout.org from the address on your account. We may need to verify your identity, and we respond within one month (45 days for California residents, extendable where the law allows). We will not treat you differently for exercising your rights.
California and other US states
In the last 12 months we have collected the categories of information listed above (identifiers, professional and employment information, audio recordings, internet activity, commercial information and inferences such as scores) and disclosed them to the service providers listed above for business purposes. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under US state privacy laws. If you use an authorised agent to make a request, we will ask for proof of their authority.
11Security
We protect information with encryption in transit and at rest, row-level access controls in our database so that each account can only read what it is permitted to read, restricted staff access, and separation between the systems that write scores and the ones users interact with. Paywalled information is enforced at the database layer, not only in the interface.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affecting your information occurs, we will notify you and the relevant authorities as the law requires. Please use a strong, unique password and tell us straight away at security@benchscout.org if you find a vulnerability.
12Children
BenchScout is for professionals and is not directed to anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from children, and we will delete it if we learn we have.
13Changes to this policy
We will update this policy as BenchScout changes. If a change is material we will notify you by email or in the product before it takes effect. The date at the top shows when it was last revised.
14Contact us
Privacy questions and requests: privacy@benchscout.org
Security reports: security@benchscout.org
General support: support@benchscout.org
Website: benchscout.org