Ethical Recruitment Policy

1. Our Position

HiringTree operates in cross-border labour migration corridors, including South Asia to the Gulf, where migrant candidates face documented risks of exploitation, fraud, and forced labour. We recognise that recruitment platforms carry a direct responsibility to prevent harm.

This policy sets out our commitments, the standards we require from all Users, and the mechanisms we use to enforce them. It is aligned with:

• The ILO General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment (2019).
• The Employer Pays Principle, endorsed by the ILO, IOM, and the Dhaka Principles for Migration with Dignity.
• The IOM International Recruitment Integrity System (IRIS) ethical framework.
• The UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 (where applicable).
• National labour and recruitment laws in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman.

2. The Employer Pays Principle

Candidates must never pay for recruitment. This is the foundation of ethical recruitment and is non-negotiable on HiringTree.

The Employer Pays Principle means:

• No fees for job applications, profile creation, or platform access — the Platform is free for candidates.
• No recruitment fees charged to candidates by agencies or companies, whether directly or indirectly, on or off the Platform.
• No salary deductions to recover recruitment costs.
• No deposits, bonds, or advances that create debt obligations for candidates.

If we receive a credible report that an Agency or Company has charged or attempted to charge recruitment fees to a candidate, we will immediately suspend the offending account and investigate. Confirmed violations result in permanent removal from the Platform and may be reported to relevant authorities.

3. Anti-Trafficking and Forced Labour

HiringTree has zero tolerance for:

• Human trafficking — recruiting candidates through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploitation.
• Forced labour — compelling work through threats, debt bondage, document confiscation, or restriction of movement.
• Contract substitution — replacing job terms after a candidate has accepted or departed their home country.
• Deceptive recruitment — misrepresenting job conditions, salary, location, employer identity, or visa terms.
• Document confiscation — withholding, confiscating, or destroying candidate passports, identity documents, or travel documents.
• Restriction of movement — preventing candidates from leaving their accommodation or workplace outside working hours.

4. Platform Safeguards

We enforce ethical recruitment through the following mechanisms:

4.1 Verification before access

• Agencies must submit valid recruitment licences and registration documents. Our team reviews these before granting access.
• Companies must provide business registration proof. Account activation requires manual approval.
• We reserve the right to reject any registration that does not meet our standards.

4.2 Job post review

• Every job post is read and approved by a member of our team before it becomes visible to candidates. No post reaches a candidate automatically.
• A reviewer can flag a post, and the reason is kept on the record against that post.
• Posts must include specific details: role, salary, working hours, accommodation, visa support, and contract duration.
• Vague or misleading posts are rejected with feedback to the poster.

4.3 After a candidate applies

• Candidates can withdraw their application at any time.
• If the terms a candidate is offered do not match what the listing said, they can report it. Reports and the action we take on them are kept on the record.
• A candidate can change whether they are looking for work, deactivate their account, or request deletion, at any point and without giving a reason.

4.4 Controlled data access

• Candidate contact details and full profile information are not freely available. Agencies must use tokens (issued by HiringTree) to unlock profile details.
• Separately, access to a candidate’s contact details, full profile or documents requires a consent record that the candidate approves, and can revoke. Revoking also purges the processing data tied to that consent.
• Where a partner creates a candidate profile on someone’s behalf rather than inviting them, the partner must first record an explicit acknowledgement that they hold lawful permission to do so. The profile is not visible to employers until they have.
• This prevents mass data harvesting and ensures candidate data is accessed only for genuine placement opportunities.

4.5 Separating our checks from regulatory approval

• We assess whether an uploaded document is genuine. We do not, and cannot, record that a medical, visa, work permit or emigration clearance has been granted.
• That status can only be recorded against the authority or partner that granted it. Our own staff are blocked from setting it — this is enforced by the system, not by policy alone, so that nothing on HiringTree can be read as us approving a candidate to travel.

4.6 Reporting and grievance mechanism

• Candidates, agencies, and companies can report concerns to contact@hiringtree.net.
• We aim to review urgent safety reports within 48 hours.
• Reporters are protected from retaliation.
• Confirmed violations are escalated according to our enforcement framework (see below).

5. Responsibilities of Agencies

Licensed recruitment agencies using HiringTree must:

• Hold and maintain valid recruitment licences in their country of operation. For agencies recruiting candidates from Nepal, this means a valid foreign employment licence issued under Nepal’s Foreign Employment Act, 2064 (2007) and regulated by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE).
• Not charge candidates any fees or costs related to recruitment, directly or indirectly.
• Provide candidates with written contracts in a language they understand before departure.
• Ensure job terms presented to candidates match actual employment conditions.
• Not retain candidate documents at any stage of the recruitment process.
• Cooperate with HiringTree’s verification and audit requests.
• Report any concerns about employer practices, working conditions, or candidate safety to HiringTree.

6. Responsibilities of Companies

Employer organisations using HiringTree must:

• Provide truthful job descriptions that reflect actual working conditions.
• Not pass recruitment costs to candidates through salary deductions or other means.
• Ensure candidates have freedom of movement and access to their personal documents.
• Provide safe and habitable accommodation where promised in the job listing.
• Comply with local labour laws regarding working hours, rest periods, and wages.
• Cooperate with HiringTree in investigating any complaints or concerns.

7. Enforcement

Violations of this policy are handled according to severity:

8. Continuous Improvement

We are committed to improving our safeguards over time. This includes:

• Reviewing and updating this policy at least annually.
• Auditing our own public claims against what the platform actually does, and correcting the claim rather than leaving it standing. Where a safeguard described here is a commitment we intend to build rather than one already running, we say so.
• Building automated detection of deceptive job-post language to sit alongside — never replace — the human review described in 4.2. This is planned work, not a current safeguard.
• Notifying applicants when a job post is materially edited after they apply. Also planned; today a candidate’s protection is the reporting channel in 4.3.
• Engaging with organisations such as IOM, ILO, and local labour rights groups.
• We plan to publish aggregate transparency reports as the platform scales.
• Soliciting feedback from candidates, agencies, and companies on how the Platform can better protect the rights of migrant candidates.

9. Contact

Report a concern: contact@hiringtree.net
Policy questions: contact@hiringtree.net
General support: contact@hiringtree.net