Privacy policy

Who we are

BuildNL (“the platform”, “we”) is an industry resource for construction employment in Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada. It is operated from St. John’s, NL. You can reach us at hello@buildnl.com or through the contact page.

What we collect

Workers

• Account: name, email, password (hashed), optional phone and photo.
• Trade profile: trade(s), experience level, apprenticeship level, skills and self-rated levels, certifications with expiry dates and optional ticket photos, work history, references you add, home community and region, regions you’ll work in, travel/camp willingness, licence and vehicle, availability status and date, work-type preferences, a short summary.
• Activity: jobs you view, save and express interest in; messages you send; notification preferences; when you were last active.

Employers

• Account and company: name, email, phone, company name, description, sectors, location, size, logo, website, benefits.
• Verification: business number, WorkplaceNL account or COR certificate details you provide. Used only to confirm you are a real NL business; not shown publicly beyond a “Verified” badge.
• Hiring activity: postings, candidate pipeline stages, messages, interview bookings, saved searches and talent pools.

Everyone

• Technical: IP address, browser type, pages viewed and basic error logs, kept for security and reliability.
• Visitor counts: we count page views through Vercel Web Analytics so we know which parts of the site are useful. It sets no cookies and does not follow you to other websites: your address and browser are turned into a short-lived code that changes every day and cannot be traced back to you. We do not use advertising trackers.
• Contact form: what you type, so we can reply.

Who can see worker profiles

You choose one of three visibility settings, changeable at any time:

• Employers can find me: verified NL employers can see your profile card in search and matching results.
• Only employers I apply to: you are hidden from search; an employer sees you only after you express interest in their job.
• Temporarily hide my profile: nobody can see you; your profile stays saved.

In every setting, your phone number and email are never shown to an employer until you express interest in their job, accept their invitation, or message them first. Ticket photos are visible only to employers you have connected with in one of those ways. These rules are enforced in the database itself, not only in the interface.

Matching and AI

Match scores are computed by a fixed, published formula (see it here) from the profile fields listed above and the job’s requirements. The same breakdown is shown to you and to the employer. No hidden ranking signals are used.

We use AI language models to explain scores in plain words, draft profile summaries and job postings, and suggest what to add to a profile. When we do, the relevant profile or job text is sent to our AI provider under a contract that prohibits training on it. AI never changes a score, never contacts anyone on your behalf, and every AI draft is shown to you for approval before it is saved.

Public reporting

The Workforce pulse and similar pages show aggregate counts only: registered workers by trade and region, jobs by trade and region, availability funnels. No profile, name, community-level location or individual attribute is ever published. Partners (colleges, unions, employment offices) may receive the same aggregates for their region.

Emails and notifications

We send transactional email: sign-in links, application status changes, messages, new matches for your trade and regions, ticket-expiry reminders, and account notices. Every type can be switched off individually in Settings, except security notices about your own account. We send at most one digest per day. We do not send marketing on behalf of third parties.

What we never do

• Sell, rent or trade personal information.
• Share your profile with employers outside the visibility rules above.
• Post your profile to other job boards.
• Use your data to train AI models.

Service providers

We use a small number of providers to run the platform: hosting and database (Supabase / Vercel), email delivery, and an AI language-model provider. Each processes data only on our instructions and under contract. Data may be stored in Canada or the United States.

Retention

Your account and profile are kept while your account is active. If you delete your account, profile data is removed within 30 days; anonymized aggregate counts and records employers are legally required to keep (for example, that an application was received) may persist without any identifying details. Contact-form messages are kept for two years.

Your rights and controls

• Access and export: download everything we hold about you from Settings, including a PDF resume built from your profile.
• Correction: edit any field, any time.
• Deletion: delete your account from Settings, or ask us to.
• Withdraw consent: change visibility or notification settings at any time.

We follow Canada’s PIPEDA and Newfoundland & Labrador’s privacy legislation. If you have a concern we cannot resolve, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Security

Connections are encrypted, passwords are hashed, and access to worker data is enforced with row-level security in the database. Staff access to personal data is limited to what is needed to support you and is logged.

Children

The platform is for people of working age in Newfoundland & Labrador. Student placements are welcome, but users must be at least 16.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will notify you in the app and by email before it takes effect. The date at the top always reflects the current version.