Terms of Service

By using Winkle you agree to these terms. If you use it for a company, you agree for the company.

These Terms of Service (the Terms) are an agreement between you and Winkle Labs Ltd (Winkle, we, us). They cover the Winkle website, the web app and everything in it: hiring tools for employers, and the job search, assessments, interviews and portfolio tools for candidates (together, the Service).

By creating an account, or by using the Service without one, you accept these Terms. If you don’t accept them, don’t use the Service. If you accept on behalf of a company or other organisation, you confirm you have the authority to bind it, and you then means that organisation as well as you.

Some parts of the Service have their own additional rules, shown where they apply (for example, a specific assessment’s instructions). Where those and these Terms disagree, the more specific rule applies to that part.

• Employer: an organisation that uses Winkle to hire, and the people it invites into its workspace.
• Workspace: an employer’s account, with its roles, pipeline, team, settings and records. It has one owner.
• Candidate: a person who applies to a role, is invited to one, or takes an assessment or interview through Winkle.
• Talent profile: a candidate’s own record on Winkle: their CV, skills, portfolio and the skills Winkle has verified.
• Assessment and interview: tests, written questions, coding tasks and AI or live interviews run on the Service.
• Credits: units an employer uses to run paid actions, such as screening a CV or running an AI interview.
• Your content: anything you or your team put into the Service: roles, CVs, answers, messages, documents and files.

You need to be 18 or older, use your own details, and keep your sign-in safe.

• You must be at least 18 to create an account.
• Give accurate details and keep them current. One email address holds one account.
• Employer accounts are opened with a work email; personal and disposable mailboxes aren’t accepted for them.
• You’re responsible for everything done through your account. Keep your password private and tell us straight away at hello@usewinkle.com if you think someone else has used it.
• If you sign in with Google, Google’s terms also apply to that sign-in.

The workspace owner is responsible for the workspace and everyone they let into it.

An employer’s workspace belongs to the organisation, and its owner manages it. The owner can invite teammates, give them roles and permissions, and remove them. Everything a teammate does in the workspace is done on the organisation’s behalf, and the organisation is responsible for it.

• Only invite people who are allowed to see the information in your workspace, including candidates’ personal data.
• A shareable join link only ever sends an ordinary invitation to an address at your company’s own email domain. It can’t grant the Admin role, and you can turn it off or replace it at any time.
• A read-only shortlist link you share with a hiring manager can be viewed by anyone who has it until it expires or you revoke it. Share it with care.
• An owner who wants to leave must first hand the workspace to another active teammate.

Winkle gives you evidence. The hiring decision, and making it lawfully, is yours.

Winkle helps employers find, screen, test, interview and hire people. It organises evidence and makes recommendations. It does not decide who gets a job. As an employer you remain the decision-maker, and you are responsible for your hiring process and for following the laws that apply to it.

In particular, you agree to:

• Post only real roles you’re genuinely hiring for, described truthfully, including pay where you publish it.
• Not use Winkle to screen, rank or reject anyone because of a protected characteristic (such as ethnicity, religion, sex, disability, age or pregnancy), or to discriminate unlawfully in any other way.
• Tell candidates what you’ll assess and how, and get any consent the law requires before you record, test or evaluate them.
• Use candidates’ information only to consider them for work with you, and keep it no longer than you need it.
• Review any automated outcome you rely on (see AI features), and give candidates a way to reach a person.

Be yourself, do your own work, and choose who can find you.

• Keep your profile honest. Claim skills and experience you actually have, and only upload work you made or have the right to share.
• Assessments and interviews must be your own work, done by you, with only the help the instructions allow. Impersonation, outside help and attempts to get round integrity checks are not allowed.
• Your talent profile is only visible to employers searching for people if you choose to be open to opportunities. You can switch that off at any time.
• When you apply to or are invited by an employer, that employer sees what you send them and the results of anything you do for them.
• Your results (scores, answers, transcripts, recordings) stay with the employer who set that assessment or interview. They aren’t shown to other employers. What can travel with you is that a skill was verified, by what kind of evidence and when.
• Practice interviews and tests you take for yourself are for you. Their results aren’t shared with employers.

Some sittings are recorded and monitored for integrity. Flags are notes for a person to review, never verdicts.

An employer can ask for an assessment or interview to be recorded (camera, screen and audio) and to use integrity safeguards such as full screen, limits on switching tabs, and blocking copy and paste. Winkle tells the candidate what will be recorded and checked before they start, and the sitting only begins once they agree.

• During a sitting, some checks run in the candidate’s browser, such as whether a face is in view and where they’re looking. Winkle does not analyse emotions.
• Anything unusual is recorded as a flag at the moment it happened, so a person can watch that moment and judge it. A flag is not a finding of cheating, and nobody is scored as guilty because of one.
• If a sitting fails because of a technical problem on our side, the credit it used is returned to the employer automatically.

AI drafts, reads and recommends. It can be wrong, so a person should check anything that matters.

Winkle uses AI to help: drafting roles and assessments, reading CVs against a role, running and grading interviews, writing interview guides and suggesting contract language. See How Winkle uses AI for the detail.

• AI output can be incomplete or wrong. Check it before you rely on it, and never treat it as legal, financial or professional advice.
• Scores come with their reasons, so you can see why a result is what it is and disagree with it.
• An employer can switch on pipeline rules that move or flag candidates based on a score or time in stage. They are off by default. A rule can only suggest a rejection; a person must confirm it, and the rejection is then that person’s decision. Candidates can ask for a human review of a rejection, and the employer is expected to answer it.
• To provide these features we send the relevant text or audio to our AI providers, who process it on our behalf.
• If you add your own AI provider key, your use of that provider is also governed by your agreement with them.

Winkle is the tool you draft and sign with. It is never a party to your contract.

Employers can draft, negotiate and sign contracts with the people and businesses they work with. Those contracts are between the employer and the other party. Winkle is not a party to them, isn’t responsible for either side keeping them, and doesn’t give legal advice about them.

• Templates, clauses and AI suggestions are starting points. Have a qualified person review anything important before it’s signed.
• When you sign electronically, Winkle records your intent to sign, a one-time code sent to you, a tamper-evident fingerprint of the document and a certificate of completion. You agree that this signature is your signature.
• Whether an electronic signature is valid for a particular document can depend on its type and on local law. You’re responsible for using the right method for yours.

Winkle keeps the record of hours. Paying people, and employing them, is up to you.

Employers can track engagements and have hours logged and approved against a contract. Those records belong to the employer and the person who logged them. Winkle doesn’t pay workers, isn’t anyone’s employer or employer of record, and isn’t responsible for tax, payroll or employment obligations that come with the work.

You see the price before you pay. Plans renew until you cancel. Credits can’t be exchanged back for money.

Some of the Service is free and some is paid. The price, what it includes and how it’s billed are shown before you pay. Prices are in US dollars. Nigerian cards are charged in naira at the exchange rate fixed when you check out. Payments are processed by our payment provider, Paystack; we never see or store your full card number.

• Plans are billed in advance, monthly or yearly, and renew automatically until you cancel. If you cancel, you keep the plan until the end of the period you’ve paid for.
• If a renewal payment fails, we’ll tell you and keep your plan running for a short grace period before moving the workspace to the free plan. Nothing in the workspace is deleted when that happens.
• Credits are used by paid actions at the rates shown in the product. Credits you buy are valid for 12 months from purchase, after which any unused ones expire. Credits have no cash value and can’t be transferred.
• Credits can’t be exchanged back for money.
• Done For You is priced and agreed with you directly before we start. Winkle doesn’t charge for it in the product.
• If you were charged by mistake, for example twice for the same thing, write to hello@usewinkle.com and our team will put it right, including a refund to the card or account you paid with where that’s due.
• If you save a card or switch on auto top-up, you authorise us to charge that card for renewals and top-ups you’ve set up, until you remove it.
• If we change a price, we’ll tell you before it applies to you. The new price takes effect from your next billing period.

Candidates can earn rewards for inviting others through their referral link. Rewards have no cash value, can only be used as the Service describes, and may change or end. If we find referrals made with fake or duplicate accounts, or by any other abuse, we may cancel the rewards and the accounts involved.

What you put in stays yours. You give us the permission we need to run the Service with it.

You keep ownership of your content. You give Winkle a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, process, display and share it, only as needed to provide, secure and improve the Service for you and the people you choose to share it with. That licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies we must keep by law or that sit in backups until they age out.

If you publish something publicly, like a portfolio page or a job posting, anyone can see it. You confirm you have the rights to everything you upload and that it doesn’t break anyone else’s rights. If you send us feedback or ideas, we can use them without owing you anything.

Use Winkle to hire and be hired honestly. Don’t abuse it, or the people on it.

You must not:

• Post fake or misleading jobs, or use Winkle to collect people’s details for anything other than hiring.
• Harass, threaten or discriminate against anyone, or post unlawful, hateful or sexually explicit material.
• Scrape, copy or export people’s data in bulk, or contact candidates outside the reason they shared their details.
• Impersonate anyone, cheat on an assessment, help someone else cheat, or interfere with integrity checks.
• Try to trick our AI into ignoring its instructions or revealing other people’s information.
• Break, overload or probe the Service’s security, reverse-engineer it, or get round usage limits, including on our free tools.
• Resell, rent or give others access to the Service except as these Terms allow.
• Upload malware, or content you don’t have the right to share.

If you find a security problem, please tell us privately at hello@usewinkle.com before telling anyone else.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data. For candidate data in your workspace, you’re in charge and we act for you.

How we collect and use personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy. We handle personal data in line with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 and other laws that apply, such as the GDPR where it does.

For personal data an employer brings into or collects through its workspace (its candidates, teammates and contacts), the employer is the controller and Winkle acts as its processor: we process that data on the employer’s instructions to provide the Service. The employer is responsible for having a lawful basis for it and for giving people the notices the law requires. Organisations that need a data processing agreement can ask at hello@usewinkle.com.

Some tools on our website can be used without an account, such as the job description and interview question generators. They have daily limits, are provided as they are, and what they produce is a draft for you to check and edit.

Winkle connects to services run by others, such as Google sign-in and calendar, Paystack for payments, video meeting tools and the job boards you import roles from. We don’t control them, and your use of them is governed by their own terms. If one changes or stops working, the part of Winkle that depends on it may change or stop too.

Winkle, including its software, design, test library, content and brand, is owned by us or our licensors and protected by law. We give you a limited, personal, non-transferable right to use the Service under these Terms. Nothing here transfers any ownership to you or lets you use our name or logo without our written permission.

You can leave whenever you like. We can suspend accounts that break these Terms. Deletion is real.

You can stop using Winkle and delete your account at any time from Settings. When you do, we sign you out everywhere and erase your personal data. Records you share with others, such as your place in an employer’s pipeline, are anonymised rather than removed, so their records still add up without showing who you were. We keep what the law requires us to keep, such as signed contracts, signatures, logged hours and records of consent.

We may suspend or close an account, or remove content, if it breaks these Terms or the law, puts other people at risk, or could expose us or others to harm. Where it’s lawful and safe, we’ll tell you why and give you a chance to respond at hello@usewinkle.com.

Sections that by their nature should continue after an account ends (including content licences needed for records we must keep, payment obligations, disclaimers, limits on liability and dispute terms) continue.

We keep improving Winkle, so features will change, and some will be marked as early or in testing. We work to keep the Service available and secure but can’t promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we may need to pause it for maintenance. If we remove something significant that you pay for, we’ll tell you first.

Winkle helps you hire well. It can’t guarantee who you hire or that you’ll be hired.

The Service is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties not stated in these Terms, including fitness for a particular purpose.

• We don’t guarantee any hiring outcome: that an employer will find the right person, or that a candidate will get a job.
• A verified skill means Winkle saw evidence of it, from the source shown. It is not a background check, an identity check, a reference or a guarantee of how someone will perform.
• We don’t check every role, profile or message, and we aren’t responsible for what employers and candidates say to each other or agree between themselves.

To the extent the law allows, Winkle is not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, arising from the Service or these Terms.

Our total liability for all claims arising from the Service or these Terms is limited to whichever is higher: the total you paid Winkle in the 6 months before the claim, or US$100.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that can’t be limited by law, such as for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

If someone makes a claim against Winkle because of your content, your hiring decisions, your contracts, or your breach of these Terms or the law, you agree to cover the reasonable costs and losses that result, including legal fees. We’ll tell you about the claim promptly and let you take part in defending it.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. If something goes wrong, contact us first at hello@usewinkle.com and we’ll try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days.

If we can’t, the dispute will be decided by the courts of Lagos State, Nigeria, unless the law where you live gives you the right to bring it somewhere else.

We may update these Terms as the Service and the law change. If a change materially affects you, we’ll tell you by email or in the product at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless it has to happen sooner for legal or security reasons. If you keep using Winkle after a change takes effect, you accept the new Terms; if you don’t accept them, you can close your account. The date at the top shows when these Terms last changed.

• These Terms, and any terms referred to in them, are the whole agreement between you and Winkle about the Service.
• If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce something straight away, we haven’t given up the right to enforce it later.
• You can’t transfer these Terms without our agreement. We may transfer them as part of a reorganisation, merger or sale, and we’ll tell you if we do.
• Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside reasonable control.
• We’ll send notices to the email on your account. You can send notices to hello@usewinkle.com.

Questions about these Terms, legal notices, privacy requests, or help with your account: write to hello@usewinkle.com. A person reads every message.

Winkle Labs Ltd · RC 9748091 · No. 366 MJS House, Murtala Muhammad Road, Yaba, Lagos State, Nigeria