You Don't Start Exposed
On most platforms, you're identifiable before you're interested. We built it the other way: companies can find you, evaluate you, and decide whether to approach — without knowing who you are. You reveal yourself only when you say so.
On most platforms, you're identifiable before you're interested. A recruiter opens your profile and sees your name, your photo, your current employer, your contact details -- before they've said a word to you. You don't get to choose when you become a lead.
You, on the other hand, get a notification that "someone viewed your profile" -- and a prompt to upgrade your subscription if you'd like to know who. We think that asymmetry is the wrong starting point for a professional relationship. So we built something different.
The Transparency Mirror
What Companies See — and What They Don't
When a company runs a search on Obvelum and your profile appears in their results, they see your skills and proficiency levels, your seniority range, your rarity tier -- how uncommon your profile is across the entire market -- your preferred roles and work arrangement, and your salary expectations. That is enough to know whether you are worth approaching. It is not enough to identify you.
Your name, your photo, your current employer, and your contact details are not visible to any company until you decide to reveal them. The reveal happens in one specific moment: when a company sends a contact request and you accept it. Before that moment, you're not a person. You're a skill set and a market signal. This is what we mean by search without identity: companies can find you, evaluate you, and decide whether to approach you, all without knowing who you are.
What You See
The mirror part: when a company finds you in a search, we tell you. You see their name, their logo, the moment it happened. If they send a contact request, you see that too -- including what role they have in mind and what they're offering. You can read everything before you decide whether to respond.
This is not a premium feature. It is the default. Every candidate on the platform has the same visibility into who is looking at them.
A fintech company in Berlin is looking for a senior backend engineer. Your profile appears in their results. They see your skills, your seniority, your rarity tier, and your salary expectations. But not your name. You get notified immediately: this company found you, for this role. You read their profile. You decide whether they're worth revealing yourself to.
The Question Everyone Asks First
Before we launched, the single most common concern from candidates during testing was this: what if my current employer finds me? It is a fair concern. The answer is straightforward -- you can block any company before they ever see your profile. This includes your current employer. The block is proactive: they will not appear in your results, and you will not appear in theirs. No notification is sent. They will never know you were there.
A Smaller Pool, on Purpose
Most platforms keep your profile active indefinitely. Your data stays in their system and their search results whether you logged in last week or three years ago. It makes the market look bigger than it actually is. In practice, a significant portion of those profiles belong to people who are not looking, not reachable, or simply not there anymore.
We made a different choice. If you haven't logged in for 30 days, your profile is automatically removed from search results. One login brings it back. We would rather surface a smaller pool of candidates who are actually present than pad our numbers with people who've moved on. For companies, this means the signal is cleaner. For you, it means you're not being contacted for roles you'd never see.
Contact Requests Don't Sit Forever
If a company sends you a contact request and you haven't responded within seven days, it expires. The company gets their credits back. There is no penalty for either side -- it simply closes. This keeps your dashboard current. If something is in your inbox, it is live. There are no month-old requests from roles that have already been filled.
Running a search usually means talking to more than one candidate at once -- that's how hiring works. The 7-day window isn't a judgment on intent: if a request expires, credits return and both sides move on cleanly. But if a company is genuinely interested and timing didn't align, they're not out of options. They can reach you directly via email -- through Obvelum -- by spending additional credits. That's not a workaround. That's the clearest signal the system can send: they thought you were worth it enough to pay twice.
Why This Matters Beyond Privacy
Privacy is part of it. But the deeper point is about who controls the hiring conversation. The traditional model puts companies in the driver's seat from the first moment: they decide who to look at, when to reach out, and how much information they need before they'll reveal themselves. The candidate waits.
We've tried to change the order of that. You see the interest before you respond to it. You know who's asking before you decide whether to answer. That's not just a privacy feature -- it's a different model of how the first step in a professional relationship should work.
Interest is visible. Identity is optional.