General Terms and Conditions

1. Scope and Description of Services

engineering-talents.com (hereinafter the 'Platform') is a placement and matching platform for engineering professionals (including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, automotive, aerospace, construction) and companies seeking such professionals for freelance projects or permanent positions. The Platform allows candidate profiles and job postings (freelance projects and permanent positions) to be created, the match between profiles and postings to be calculated automatically and both sides to express interest. The parties only exchange names and contact details once there is a match (clause 4a).

Use of the Platform is free for candidates; it is funded through advertising and the paid company membership (Section 6b). Optionally, a paid ad-free membership can also be taken out, see Section 6a.

For readability, German personal terms such as candidate, user or contact person are used in the masculine form. They apply equally to people of every gender.

2. Registration and User Account

• Registration requires truthful provision of the requested data and confirmation of the email address.
• Each user registers with exactly one role (company or candidate); changing roles is not supported.
• Only persons with legal capacity, or persons authorized to represent a company, are permitted to use the Platform.
• A company can have several users (at most 3 company admins and 20 further users). The company admins manage the users and their permissions and are responsible for ensuring that they act on behalf of the company only within their authority.
• Login credentials must be kept confidential; users are liable for activity under their account to the extent they are responsible for it.

3. User Obligations

• Profile and job posting content must be truthful, lawful and not misleading.
• No unlawful, discriminatory content or content infringing third-party rights may be posted.
• When posting job ads for permanent positions, the requirements of the German General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) must be observed, in particular non-discriminatory, gender-neutral wording without reference to age, origin, religion, disability or sexual identity.
• Short messages accompanying an expression of interest must remain factual; insults, threats and unlawful content are prohibited.
• Names, contact details and profiles received via the Platform may only be used to get in touch and to carry out the respective selection process, not for advertising and not for passing on to third parties.
• Recruiters and recruiting agencies may place postings for their clients. They must state in the posting that they are searching on behalf of a client and assure that they are authorised to do so. If they pass candidate data on to their client, this requires the candidate's prior consent; the platform has no function for this.
• The Platform must not be used for automated data scraping or to circumvent access restrictions.

4. No Placement Guarantee, No Contracting Party

The operator does not itself broker assignments or employment relationships and does not become a party to any contracts concluded between users (assignments or employment contracts). There is no entitlement to a particular matching result, a particular number of expressions of interest, the conclusion of an assignment, or an invitation or hiring. The users involved are solely responsible for the course and outcome of discussions and of any selection process (including selection, invitation, rejection). The respective users are solely responsible for the accuracy of profiles and job postings.

4a. Interest, match and release of contact details

• The match between profiles and postings is calculated automatically and is a suggestion. Interest can only be expressed by someone who matches the posting or profile sufficiently; the company sets the minimum value for this for each posting.
• Before a company learns a candidate's name and contact details, it sees the profile as a preview without name, contact details, photo and CV. Employer names, education and location are part of the preview, so the candidate may be recognisable; before expressing interest, the platform shows the candidate what the company sees. Without the candidate's interest, companies only see the profile if the candidate has made it available for suggestions to companies.
• If both sides express interest (match), the company receives the candidate's name, e-mail address, phone number, photo and CV, and the candidate receives the company's designated contact person. Both sides are asked to get in touch with each other. From that point on, each side is responsible for the data it has received.
• A short message of up to 1,000 characters can be sent with the interest. An open interest expires after 30 days and can be withdrawn or declined by the other side. A decline by the company is final for the respective posting; anyone who withdraws their interest or whose interest expires can express it again as long as the posting is active. When a posting is closed, open interests end; existing matches remain.
• Companies express interest only through users with the corresponding permission and only after a company admin has confirmed the data protection commitment statement. Each company can express at most 50 new interests per day.

5. Content Moderation

The operator reserves the right to suspend, close or remove profiles, job postings and short messages that violate these terms or applicable law.

6. Advertising

Advertisements (e.g. via Google AdSense) and directly booked sponsor banners may be displayed on the platform. Personalised advertising is only shown with your consent via the cookie banner. With the ad-free membership (clause 6a) the advertising no longer applies.

6a. Paid Ad-Free Membership

In addition to free use, an ad-free membership can be taken out. The membership is billed annually in advance and renews for a further year each time unless it is cancelled. The current price is shown on the checkout page before you complete your purchase. Payment is processed by our payment provider Stripe; by completing the purchase, you instruct us to charge you the costs under the terms shown there until you cancel.

The membership unlocks ad-free use only; it grants no further benefits or special rights compared to free use.

Cancellation is possible at any time, effective at the end of the current billing period, via our payment provider's customer portal, accessible from the membership page in your account.

Right of Withdrawal for Consumers

Consumers have the statutory right to withdraw from the contract for the ad-free membership within fourteen days of conclusion of the contract, without giving reasons. In the event of a valid withdrawal, we will refund the payment made in full, even if the ad-free service has already been used; no compensation for value will be charged.

To exercise the right of withdrawal, the user must inform us (Christoph Mahlke, Sieker Landstraße 95, 22927 Großhansdorf, Germany, email: info@engineering-talents.com) of the decision to withdraw from this contract by means of a clear statement (e.g. by email). Sending the notice before the deadline expires is sufficient to meet the deadline.

In the event of an effective withdrawal, we will refund any amounts already paid in full without undue delay, and in any event within fourteen days of receiving the withdrawal notice; the membership ends at the same time.

6b. Company membership (businesses only)

• Publishing job postings requires a paid company membership. Creating and editing drafts is possible without a membership.
• The membership is aimed exclusively at businesses within the meaning of section 14 of the German Civil Code (BGB). By signing up, the company confirms that it acts as a business. The company membership is not open to consumers; there is therefore no right of withdrawal.
• The plans differ in the number of postings that may be active at the same time (currently 1, 5, 10 or 50) and are billed monthly. The prices shown on the plans page and in checkout before signing up apply; they are net prices plus statutory VAT. A posting counts as active while it is published. A published posting occupies its slot for at least 30 days from publication. If the company closes it earlier, the slot stays taken until day 30 and becomes free afterwards. A closure by us or by the end of the membership does not trigger a slot binding. Drafts do not count.
• The quota of a plan can be increased with extra postings. Extra postings are billed monthly as a separate item; their price depends on the booked plan and is shown before booking. Prices including extra postings are shown on the publicly accessible plan pages; only logged-in company admins can book.
• The membership renews automatically for the billing period booked and can be cancelled at any time, effective the end of the current period, in the membership management of your account. Periods already paid are not refunded pro rata.
• When the membership ends, the job postings end too: All active postings of the company are closed when the membership ends. Drafts and closed postings remain in the account and can be used as templates for new postings. We point this out by email before a cancelled membership ends.
• A bigger plan or more extra postings apply immediately, and the difference is billed pro rata. A smaller plan or fewer extra postings apply only at the end of the current billing period. The company chooses which active postings stay active at the switch; the others are then closed. If the company makes no selection or publishes further postings after selecting, the postings above the new limit are closed, the most recently confirmed first.
• If a payment fails, our payment provider retries the charge. If the membership ends because of non-payment, the postings end too.
• Payment processing, invoicing and collection of the billing address and VAT ID are handled by Stripe. Promotion codes and introductory discounts apply only for the period stated; there is no entitlement to them.
• We announce price changes by email at least four weeks before they take effect; until then the company can cancel the membership to the end of the current period.

7. Liability

The operator is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, and under the provisions of the German Product Liability Act. For slight negligence, the operator is only liable for breach of a material contractual obligation (cardinal obligation), and limited to the foreseeable damage typical for this type of contract. The liability privileges under Sections 7 et seq. of the German Telemedia Act (TMG) apply to content posted by users; the operator does not adopt third-party content as its own.

8. Term and Termination

The user relationship is for an indefinite period. Users can end their account at any time and permanently themselves via 'Delete account' in their own account. The operator may suspend accounts for violations of these terms. Section 6b also applies to the company membership.

9. Changes to these Terms

Changes to these terms and the privacy policy are communicated to users by e-mail and by a notice in the account, stating the time of the change and the date by which agreement is required. After the change, the platform remains usable unchanged for 30 days. Anyone who has not agreed to the changed versions by the end of this period keeps access to their account, their data and existing contacts, but can no longer use AI-supported functions, new matching suggestions (matchings) or new expressions of interest until they agree. For companies, the agreement of one company admin is sufficient; if it is missing after the period has ended, the membership ends at the next billing date and the postings are then closed. If there have been several changes, only the most recent version is relevant for the agreement. The account can be deleted at any time.

10. Final Provisions

The laws of the Federal Republic of Germany apply, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Mandatory consumer protection provisions of the country in which a user, as a consumer, has their habitual residence remain unaffected.

If the user is a merchant, a legal entity under public law, or a special fund under public law, or if the user has no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, the exclusive place of jurisdiction for all disputes arising out of or in connection with this contractual relationship is Hamburg. This jurisdiction agreement does not apply to consumers; the statutory rules of jurisdiction remain applicable to them.

Should individual provisions of these Terms be invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions shall remain unaffected.