HowBe Talent Candidate Agreement

1. What we do, and what we are not

HowBe Talent finds companies that are hiring interns and early-career people, and introduces candidates from our pool to those companies. We interview you, we look at your actual work, and we tell the company honestly what we think.

We are not your employer. We are not a staffing agency and not an employer of record. If a company hires you, that company employs you, puts you on its payroll, sets your schedule, supervises your work, and pays you directly. We do not employ you, we do not pay you, we do not direct your work, and we never take a cut of your wages.

Joining the pool is not an offer of a job and does not create an employment relationship with anyone.

2. You are never charged

HowBe Talent is free for candidates, permanently and without exception. There is no signup fee, no placement fee, no training fee, no visa fee, and no percentage of your pay. Our entire fee is paid by the hiring company, and only after you actually start.

If anyone ever asks you to pay HowBe Talent money, for anything, it is not us. Report it to talent@howbetech.com immediately.

3. Your profile, and who sees it

When you join, you give us your contact details, your background, your resume or portfolio links, your availability, and what you want to work on. We use that to match you to open roles.

Your resume does not move without your consent. Before we send your name or your materials to any company, we tell you which company it is, what the role is, and what the terms are, and you decide. If you say no, or you say nothing, we send nothing.

Once you approve an introduction, the company receives your materials, our interview notes, and our honest assessment, including where we think you are weak. That is what makes our recommendation worth anything to them. You can ask us at any time what we have said about you.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone other than a company you have approved, except where the law requires it.

4. Telling us the truth

Everything you tell us has to be accurate. Your education, your enrollment status, your graduation date, your work history, your skills, your authorization to work in the country where the role is, and the work you show us as your own.

We verify enrollment and expected graduation directly with schools. Misrepresenting any of it removes you from the pool permanently, and if it comes out after a placement starts, we will tell the employer.

We do not run background checks, credit checks, or drug tests. If a company runs one after making you a conditional offer, that is between you and the company.

5. Telling us when something changes

This is the obligation we care about most, and it is the one that keeps the pool honest for everyone in it.

Within three (3) business days, tell us if any of the following happens:

• you accept any job, internship, fellowship, or contract, whether or not we introduced you to it, and whether or not it came through us at all;
• you start a new role, or your existing role changes materially;
• you are no longer available for the hours, the dates, or the locations you told us about;
• your authorization to work changes, expires, or is about to;
• you withdraw from a hiring process we introduced you to, or a company stops responding to you;
• your email, phone number, school status, or country of residence changes.

When you tell us about a new role, include all of it:

• the company name and the role title;
• where the work happens, meaning remote, or the city and country;
• your start date, and your expected end date or the number of weeks;
• your contracted hours per week;
• your pay rate, including the currency.

Send it to talent@howbetech.com or through the check-in form, which asks for exactly these fields.

To be clear about why we ask for the numbers. Our fee is charged to the employer and is calculated from the terms of your engagement. We confirm those terms with the employer in writing before we invoice them, and their records govern if the two differ. You are not part of that payment in any way. You owe us nothing, you are not named on the invoice, nothing is ever deducted from your pay, and it is never your job to collect anything from an employer. Your entire obligation is to tell us the terms.

The second reason is simpler. If you are no longer looking, every hour we spend pitching you to a company is an hour of that company's time we have wasted, which is the fastest way to lose the relationships that get the next person placed.

Telling us late, or not at all, is grounds for removal from the pool.

6. Your weekly check-in while you are placed

From your first day until your placement ends, send us a short check-in once a week, by the end of the day each Friday. It takes about two minutes and it lives at howbetech.com/talent-checkin.html.

It asks six things:

• how many hours you actually worked this week;
• whether you were paid, on time and in full, for the hours you worked;
• what you worked on;
• anything blocking you;
• whether anything about the role has changed from what you were told;
• whether you intend to continue.

The pay question is the one we most want answered. If a company is late paying you, is paying you less than the agreed rate, is not paying you for hours you worked, or is pushing you well past your agreed hours, say so in the check-in or contact us immediately and we will take it up with them. That is a large part of what we are for.

If you miss two consecutive weeks without telling us why, we will follow up with you, and if we still do not hear back we may contact the employer to confirm the placement is still running.

7. Hours, pay, and the minimum commitment

We do not set your hours or your wage. The hiring company does, and the numbers that govern your placement are the ones in that company's written offer to you.

We only place paid roles. We will not introduce you to an unpaid internship at a for-profit company. Before we introduce you to any company, we tell you in writing what the role pays, how many hours per week it expects, whether it is remote, hybrid, or onsite, and the expected start and end dates. You decide whether to be introduced on those terms. Nothing is agreed until you take the company's offer.

Your pay is paid to you by the employer, directly, on the employer's payroll and on the employer's schedule. It never passes through us, and we never deduct anything from it.

Once you accept a placement, the hours in that offer are a commitment. Companies plan around them, and a candidate who quietly drops from twenty hours to five is the single fastest way to end a relationship we spent months building. If you cannot meet your hours in a given week, whether because of exams, illness, or anything else, tell the employer and tell us in advance. Almost every company is reasonable about this when they hear it early, and almost none are when they find out afterwards.

If you need to end a placement early, give the employer and us as much notice as you can, and at minimum two weeks where that is possible.

8. The company's own paperwork

Most companies have their own confidentiality and intellectual property agreements, and you will normally sign them before your first day. We coordinate that and confirm it back to the company, but the agreement is between you and them, not with us.

Read what you sign. If something in a company's paperwork worries you, tell us before you sign it. We will tell you plainly whether it is standard for the role, and we will raise it with the company on your behalf if it is not.

While you are placed, the company's rules apply to your work: their schedule, their timekeeping, their security practices, and their code of conduct.

9. Interviews and commitments

If you accept an interview, show up, on time and prepared. If you need to reschedule or you want to withdraw, tell us as early as you can, and we will handle it with the company. Withdrawing is always fine. Going quiet is not.

Repeatedly missing interviews we scheduled for you, or accepting an offer and then not starting without telling anyone, removes you from the pool.

10. Not routing around us

If we introduce you to a company, do not arrange with that company to delay, restructure, or disguise your hire in order to avoid our placement fee, and do not agree to a lower wage in exchange for the company avoiding it.

This is not a restriction on you working anywhere. You are free to apply anywhere, accept anything, and stay at a company we introduced you to for as long as you like. It only prohibits a deliberate arrangement to cut us out of a hire we created, which is money taken from the service that got you the introduction.

If you were already in a company's hiring process before we introduced you, tell us and we will simply take that company off your list.

11. Confidentiality

What a company tells us about a role, its team, its plans, or its compensation range, and what we pass on to you, is confidential. Use it to evaluate the opportunity. Do not post it, forward it, or share it outside the people advising you personally.

We treat what you tell us the same way. Your compensation expectations, your other processes, and anything you tell us in a check-in are not shared with an employer except where you have asked us to raise it.

12. No guarantee

We cannot promise you a placement, an interview, or a particular kind of role. Demand varies, and some tracks are busier than others. What we commit to is being honest with you about where you stand, and telling you if we do not think we can place you rather than leaving you waiting.

We also do not guarantee anything about a company's conduct after you are hired. If a placement goes wrong, tell us, and we will act on it.

13. Your data, and leaving the pool

We keep your profile for as long as you are in the pool, and for twenty-four (24) months after your last contact with us, so that we can come back to you when something fits. After that we delete it.

You can leave at any time by emailing talent@howbetech.com. Say whether you want your profile deleted or kept on file, and we will do it within thirty (30) days and confirm in writing. You can also ask us at any time for a copy of what we hold about you, or ask us to correct it.

Deleting your profile does not reach back into a company we already introduced you to with your approval. That company holds its own copy of what it received, under its own privacy policy, and you would need to ask them directly.

If you are in California, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the European Union, you have additional statutory rights over your personal information, and we honour them. Our privacy policy has the detail.

14. Equal opportunity

We source, screen, and refer candidates without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We will not act on an instruction from any company to prefer or exclude candidates on the basis of a protected characteristic. If you believe you were treated unfairly in a process we ran, tell us and we will look into it.

15. Ending this agreement

Either of us can end this agreement at any time, in writing, with no penalty and nothing owed in either direction.

We may remove you from the pool for misrepresenting your background, repeatedly missing interviews or check-ins, abandoning a placement without notice, or conduct at a placement that a reasonable employer would not accept. Where it is our decision, we will tell you why.

Sections 10, 11, 13, and 16 survive the end of this agreement.

16. Liability

We are not the employer of any placed candidate and we are not responsible for a company's acts, omissions, hiring decisions, working conditions, or failure to pay. Your remedy for those lies against the employer, and we will help you pursue it.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability to you arising out of this agreement is limited to one hundred dollars ($100), and neither of us is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, or consequential damages. Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law, and nothing in this agreement waives any right you have under employment or wage law, which is not ours to waive.

17. General

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law rules, and the parties consent to venue in Alameda County, California. If you live outside California, this does not displace the mandatory protections of the law where you live or where you work, and your placement itself is governed by the employment law of the place the work is performed.

This agreement is the entire agreement between you and us on this subject. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. We may update these terms, and we will email you when we do. The version in effect on the date you accepted governs, until you accept a newer one.

You may not assign this agreement. We may assign it to a successor in a merger or a sale of substantially all assets.

18. Acceptance

You accept this agreement by ticking the acceptance box on the join the pool form and submitting it, by signing below, or by asking us in writing to introduce you to a company after you have received these terms.

If you are under 18, a parent or legal guardian must accept on your behalf and sign alongside you.