Website terms and conditions template

About this document

A recruitment site needs two sets of terms: a contract with a job seeker, and one with an employer, recruitment agency or other recruiter. This product is a pack of both.

The documents are carefully drawn by an experienced solicitor to cover not only the legal requirements but also practical commercial matters.

So far as the Consumer Contracts (ICAC) Regulations are concerned, there is no impact on you unless you provide some service to your job seekers, for money. For example, if you provide careers advice, or edit CVs, or offer premium placings, then the regulations do apply. We have provided for this possibility but the drafting notes clearly show how you can delete those provisions if you sell no service. Of course the Regulations do not apply in any event to your recruiters because, by definition, they must be in business and therefore are not “consumers”.

Are these terms suitable for your website?

These documents are for any website that creates a marketplace primarily for recruitment, where both job seekers and recruiters access your system entirely through your site. It might be a simple site accepting CVs and job adverts or there may be additional services or information offered to either or both sides.

Your site might specialise in a particular type of employment (such as part time jobs), industry (such as engineering), geography (such as jobs in Wales) or job seeker demographic (such as jobs for people under 30 years of age).

The same documents also cover access from a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet.

Your recruiters and seekers may be anywhere in the world. For example, you might be advertising jobs in Europe to an Asian audience, with your business based in the UK.

The benefit of clear terms

Having terms on your website is a must if you are to control how visitors use your site. They are probably the best example of a legal document where use of plain English strengthens the legal effect of the document. If a dispute should arise, it would be hard for a visitor to claim that he did not understand, even if English is not his first language.

Using these document on your website will help you to:

• set out clearly how your business works and how users should act and behave;

• ensure that users receive the quality of service that you aim to provide;

• present a professional image. Our use of plain English helps to ensure that sellers do not feel intimidated by overly formal or legalistic language;

• prevent misunderstandings and make solving disputes easier;

• protect your website from misuse (we include paragraphs that set out exactly how users can interact with the site, and what they cannot do);

• protect your business from complaints about content that your users posted  particularly important if users can post information, questions, data and take part in discussions without you actively monitoring every post or message.

The law in this documents

The law relating to these documents is largely common law that deals with the basics of contracts: offer, acceptance, price and payment, provision of service, liabilities and risk. By and large, you can set the terms you want, particularly the commercial ones.

The documents should be edited so that they reflect exactly how your business works. Our guidance notes will tell you what you can change safely, and what we don't advise editing.

These template allows you to comply with the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, so far as they apply.

Contents

The documents include the following:

• Definitions and interpretation
• Basis of contract between you and each of recruiters and job seekers
• Application of Consumer Contracts (ICAC) Regulations 2013
• Prices for your services
• Renewal payments and credit cards
• Options for re assurance to customers that you will take care of data
• Extensive options as to what a user may or may not do
• Removal of offensive content
• Security
• Storage of data
• Terms specific to recruiters
• Terms specific to job seekers
• Protection of copyright and other intellectual property rights
• Interruption to service
• Disclaimers and limitation of liability
• Miscellaneous legal matters to protect your business

We also include over 3000 words of helpful notes to make your task even easier.