Privacy notice
Last updated 8 September 2026
This notice explains what personal information Ascend holds about you, what we do with it, who else sees it, and what you can require us to do about it.
The part most people want first: your CV is read by AI systems run by Anthropic and OpenAI. Section 5 sets out exactly what reaches them. We never send your CV to an employer. You do that yourself.
1.Who we are
Ascend runs the website at ascendcareers.co.uk. We are the controller of the information described in this notice, which means we decide what is collected and why, and we answer for it.
Write to hello@ascendcareers.co.uk with any question, request or complaint. It reaches a person, not a queue.
This notice covers the website, the account and tools behind it, and the email we send you. It does not cover employers, job boards, or any site we link you to. When you apply for a job you leave Ascend, and that employer becomes responsible for what you send them.
2.What we collect
Your account. Your email address and your password, held by our authentication provider, Supabase. Your name, if you give it.
Your CV. The file you upload, and the structured version we produce from it: your education and grades, your jobs and what you did in them, your skills, and your work authorisation where the CV states it. When you upload a new CV we keep the previous reading of it, so that a bad parse can be recovered.
What you tell us you want. Your preferences, your saved searches, the industries you include and exclude, the companies you follow, and your alert settings.
What you do here. The jobs you view, save, hide, track and mark as applied. The stage each application has reached and your notes on it. The feedback you leave on a match.
Technical data. Your IP address, your device and browser, and the pages you visit. This arrives automatically when you use the site.
What you send us. Anything you write to us by email or through a form.
We do not collect payment information. Ascend is free during the beta.
3.How we collect it
Directly from you, when you register, upload a CV, set preferences, or write to us.
Automatically, through our hosting and analytics, which record technical data and page activity as you use the site. Section 9 covers cookies.
From nobody else. We do not buy personal data, and we do not receive it from data brokers or partners. Job adverts come from job-advert suppliers, but those describe employers, not you.
4.Why we use it, and what allows us to
We must have a lawful basis for each purpose. Ours are:
| What we do | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Create and run your account | You asked for the service | Contract |
| Read your CV and match it against jobs | This is the service | Contract |
| Show you a feed, alerts and daily picks | This is the service | Contract |
| Send service email about your account and matches | This is the service | Contract |
| Keep the previous reading of your CV | So a bad parse can be undone | Legitimate interests |
| Measure how the product is used, and fix errors | To keep it working and improve it | Legitimate interests |
| Detect and prevent abuse of the service | To protect students and the service | Legitimate interests |
| Test whether a change to the matching is an improvement | See section 6 | Legitimate interests |
| Tell you about new Ascend features | To let you know what the product does now | Legitimate interests |
| Deal with a sale, investment or reorganisation of Ascend | So the business can change hands without the service stopping | Legitimate interests |
| Answer legal requests and keep required records | The law requires it | Legal obligation |
| Process sensitive information in your CV | See section 7 | Your explicit consent |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interest against your rights, and you may object at any time. Section 11 says how.
Some of this we cannot do without. Your email address and your CV are what the service is made of, and parts of Ascend will not work without them.
Email about new features is the one you can simply switch off. Every message of that kind carries an unsubscribe link, and using it changes nothing else.
5.The AI providers, and what reaches them
Ascend cannot do its job without reading your CV, and it reads it with AI models we do not own.
Anthropic receives the text of your CV and the text of job adverts. It returns the structured reading of your CV and the judgement about which requirements you meet.
OpenAI receives text from your CV and from job adverts to produce embeddings, which are numerical representations used to find similar jobs.
Both act on our instructions and both are in the United States. Section 8 covers what makes that lawful.
We never send your CV to an employer. No provider above is given your name in order to identify you to anyone.
6.Using CVs to improve the matching
The matching gets better by being tested against real CVs, because the mistakes that matter only show up on documents real people wrote. So we use a small number of CVs, and the matches produced from them, to check whether a change to the matching is an improvement before it reaches anybody.
We rely on our legitimate interest in making the product work. You can object at any time and we will take your CV out of that set. Section 11 says how, and nothing about your account changes if you do.
7.Sensitive information in your CV
A CV often carries information the law treats as a special category: nationality and immigration status, disability, health, religion where you name a faith school or society, and trade union membership. Ascend reads the text of your CV and sends it to the providers named in section 5. It does not look for this information, but it does process it.
The law forbids processing that without your explicit agreement. So we ask before we read your CV, with a separate tick that is not bundled into anything else, and we record what you agreed to and when. You can withdraw it by writing to us.
You can also simply remove any of this detail from your CV before you upload it. Nothing in Ascend requires it.
8.Who else sees your information, and where it goes
We share your information only with the service providers we need to run Ascend. Each acts on our instructions.
| Provider | What it does | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, sign-in, CV file storage | London, United Kingdom |
| Render | Runs the application | Frankfurt, European Union |
| Vercel | Serves the website | European Union |
| Anthropic | Reads your CV and judges job requirements | United States |
| OpenAI | Produces embeddings used to find similar jobs | United States |
| Resend | Sends our email | United States |
| PostHog | Analytics and error tracking | European Union |
Your account and your CV are stored in the United Kingdom. Only the CV text sent to Anthropic and OpenAI, and the email address and message sent to Resend, leave the UK and the EU. Those transfers are covered by the UK's approved contract terms for sending personal data abroad.
If Ascend changes hands. If the business is sold, invested in or reorganised, the people looking at it and the people buying it may need to see personal data, and it may transfer with the business. We share the least that will do, under confidentiality, and whoever takes it on is bound by this notice until they tell you otherwise.
Beyond this we disclose information only where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.
9.Cookies and what we store on your device
Strictly necessary. Your sign-in session. Without it you cannot stay logged in. This does not require your consent.
Analytics. PostHog, which records the pages you visit and the actions you take, so we can see what works. This is not necessary, and we ask before we set anything. Until you say yes, no analytics script loads and no analytics cookie is set. You can change your mind at any time by writing to us, and you can block or delete cookies in your browser.
10.How long we keep it
| Data | How long |
|---|---|
| Your account, and everything attached to it | Until you delete it, or 24 months after your last sign-in |
| Your CV file and the reading of it | The life of your account. It goes when the account goes |
| A CV uploaded by somebody who never finished registering | 24 hours, then deleted automatically |
| The previous reading, kept after you upload a new CV | 30 days |
| Application and error logs | 90 days |
| Analytics events | 12 months |
The 24-hour rule is worth stating plainly. Uploading a CV happens before you create an account, so if you upload and then leave, we hold a named person's CV belonging to somebody we cannot contact. A scheduled job deletes those every night.
When you delete your account we delete your profile and the records attached to it. Backups are overwritten on our providers' own cycles.
Two things last longer than the table says. Where we need a record to defend a legal claim, to investigate fraud or abuse, or because the law requires us to keep it, we keep that record for as long as that reason lasts, and no longer.
And counts and averages that do not identify anybody, for example how often a kind of requirement is met across every match, are kept indefinitely. They are not personal data and we will not try to work back from them to you.
11.Your rights
You have the right to:
- be told what we hold about you, and get a copy of it;
- correct anything inaccurate;
- have it deleted, where we have no overriding reason to keep it;
- restrict what we do with it while a dispute is resolved;
- receive it in a portable form, or have it sent to another service;
- object to processing we base on legitimate interests, including profiling;
- withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on it. Withdrawing does not undo what was lawful beforehand;
- not be subject to a decision made only by a machine that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
Write to hello@ascendcareers.co.uk. We answer within one month. There is no charge. We may ask you to confirm who you are before we act. You can also delete your account yourself from your account settings.
If you think we have got something wrong you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113. We would rather you came to us first.
12.Automated processing
Ascend decides automatically which jobs to show you and how to describe your fit against each one. It reads your CV, compares it with each advert's stated requirements, and ranks the result.
This decides what appears on your screen. It does not decide whether you get a job, and no employer sees it. You remain free to search, to ignore our ranking, and to apply to anything you find.
Our judgement is about the requirements an advert states. It is not a judgement about you, and it is sometimes wrong. You can tell us so on any match, and you can ask a person to look at it by writing to us.
13.Security
Traffic to Ascend is encrypted in transit. Your password is stored hashed by our authentication provider and is never visible to us. Access to production data is limited to those who need it, and errors are monitored so that failures are found rather than reported.
No service is completely secure. If a breach puts your rights at risk we will tell the ICO within 72 hours and tell you without undue delay.
14.Age
Ascend is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information about anyone younger. If you believe a child has given us their information, write to us and we will delete it.
15.Other sites
Ascend links to employers and job boards. We do not control them and we are not responsible for what they do with your information. Read their notices before you apply.
16.Changes to this notice
We will update this page when our practices change. If a change is significant we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect, and tell you what changed. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current text.
17.Governing law
This notice is governed by the law of England and Wales.