Frequently asked questions

Yes — completely free. Candidates never pay anything to register, create a profile, upload a CV, or appear in recruiter searches. CVDesk is free for job seekers forever.

Only verified recruiters who have paid to unlock your profile can see your full name, contact details and download your CV. Before a recruiter unlocks your profile they can only see your job title, skills, location, experience level and salary range — not your name or contact information.

Yes. You can toggle your open to work status on or off at any time from your profile page. When you turn it off your profile is completely hidden from all recruiter searches. You can turn it back on whenever you are ready.

We accept PDF and Microsoft Word (DOCX) files only. Image files such as JPG and PNG are not accepted. Maximum file size is 10MB. We recommend uploading your CV as a PDF to ensure formatting is preserved correctly.

Yes. Your dashboard shows the total number of times your CV has been downloaded and the date it was last downloaded. This gives you visibility into how much interest your profile is generating.

You can request account deletion by contacting us at privacy@cvdesksa.co.za. We will delete your profile, CV and all personal information within 7 business days in accordance with POPIA. Note that anonymised download records may be retained for up to 2 years for audit purposes.

Yes. CVDesk is fully compliant with the Protection of Personal Information Act (Act 4 of 2013). When you register you provide explicit consent for your data to be stored and processed. Your consent is recorded with a timestamp. You have the right to access, correct and delete your data at any time.

After registering your recruiter account is manually reviewed by our team. We verify your company name and email domain. Personal email addresses such as Gmail and Yahoo are not accepted — you must register with a company email. Verification usually takes 1 business day and you will be notified by email once approved.

Each credit unlocks one candidate profile for 90 days. Once unlocked you can view the candidate's full details and download their CV as many times as you need during the 90 day period. Credits are purchased through your recruiter account and never expire.

No. CVs must be downloaded one at a time. There is a maximum of 10 CV downloads per hour per recruiter account. This limit is in place to protect candidate data and prevent bulk scraping of the database. Accounts that attempt to circumvent these limits will be suspended.

Before unlocking you can see the candidate's job title, seniority level, years of experience, location, desired province, work type preference, availability, salary expectation range and skills. The candidate's name, contact details and CV are hidden until you unlock their profile.

If a candidate deletes their profile after you have already downloaded their CV, you retain your local copy. The candidate's profile and data will be removed from the platform. In this case credits are not refunded as the candidate information was successfully accessed before deletion.

No. Automated scraping, bots and headless browsers are strictly prohibited by our terms of use. We actively monitor for suspicious activity and accounts found using automated tools will be permanently suspended without refund.

We accept all major credit and debit cards through our secure payment provider Stripe. All payments are processed in South African Rand (ZAR). We do not store your card details — all payment information is handled directly by Stripe.

Unused credits can be refunded within 14 days of purchase provided no unlocks have been made. Once a profile has been unlocked that credit is considered used and is non-refundable. Please contact us at billing@cvdesksa.co.za for refund requests.