Who Can See My Candidate Profile?

The honest answer depends entirely on a setting most candidates never check: your discoverability toggle. If it is on, opted-in recruiters searching the platform can find and view your profile. If it is off, they cannot — your profile does not appear in search results at all. This article explains exactly who can see what on Traceroster, and gives you a short checklist for checking the same thing on any platform you use.

The short answer

On Traceroster:

• Your profile is only searchable if you have turned discoverability on. Turn it off, and recruiters cannot find you in search, period.
• Traceroster does not scrape the web or pull in profiles from elsewhere. Only candidates who have actively opted in are searchable — there is no shadow database of people who never signed up.
• Even when your profile is discoverable, your contact details are never public. Recruiters cannot see your email or phone number just by finding your profile.
• Recruiters access contact info using a limited number of monthly "reveal" credits, and once revealed, follow-up happens through in-app messaging, not by contacting you directly outside the platform.

That is the whole model. Discovery and contact are two separate gates, and you control the first one directly.

What the discoverability toggle actually does

Your candidate profile has a discoverability setting. When it is on, your profile is eligible to appear in recruiter searches that match your skills, experience, and availability — the same kind of semantic search described in what AI job matching looks at beyond your resume. When it is off, your profile is excluded from search results entirely, even if a recruiter's search would otherwise be a strong match for you.

This is a genuine on/off switch, not a "reduced visibility" setting. Turning it off is the right move if you are not actively looking, want to pause your search without deleting your work, or simply are not ready to be found yet. Turning it back on later restores your searchability without any need to rebuild the profile.

Being findable in search is a separate question from whether your writing is good enough to win a search once you're findable — for that, see how to get discovered by recruiters without keyword stuffing.

Who can actually search for you

Only recruiters and hiring teams using the platform can search candidate profiles, and only among candidates who have opted in by turning discoverability on. There is no public-facing directory of candidates, and profiles are not indexed by general web search engines. Being on Traceroster does not mean being visible to the open internet — it means being visible to recruiters searching within the platform, and only if you have chosen to be.

This matters because a lot of what makes candidates nervous about "putting themselves out there" online is really a fear of open, uncontrolled exposure — a resume floating around indefinitely, or a current employer stumbling across a public profile. Opted-in-only search inside a closed platform is a fundamentally different exposure model than posting a resume publicly.

Contact info: reveal-gated, not public

Even a fully discoverable profile does not expose your email or phone number to anyone who finds it. Contact details sit behind a reveal action: a recruiter has to spend one of their limited monthly reveal credits to access your contact info. This does two things for you.

First, it means casual browsing does not equal contact. A recruiter can look at your profile, read your experience, and decide you are not a fit, all without ever seeing how to reach you. Only a recruiter who is serious enough to spend a reveal credit gets your details.

Second, it creates a limiting factor on the recruiter side. Reveal credits are capped per month, so recruiters use them deliberately rather than mass-revealing every profile that turns up in a search. That is a structural reason your info does not end up scattered.

Messaging happens in-app, not by cold outreach

Once a recruiter has revealed your contact info, the actual conversation still happens through Traceroster's in-app messaging rather than an unsolicited call or email showing up out of nowhere. That keeps a record of the conversation in one place and means you are not fielding recruiter contact through channels you did not expect to hear from them on.

A general checklist for evaluating any platform's privacy model

Not every platform works this way, so it is worth checking a few things whenever you put a profile anywhere:

• Is there a real on/off control for visibility, or are you only ever "somewhat" visible with no way to fully opt out?
• Is the platform closed to opted-in users, or does it scrape and aggregate profiles from elsewhere without consent?
• Is contact info public by default, or gated behind some action the other side has to take deliberately?
• Does outreach happen in-app, or does putting a profile up mean your personal email or phone number effectively becomes public?
• Can you tell, concretely, who has viewed or revealed your info, or is that opaque?

If a platform cannot give you clear answers to these, treat that as a signal, not an oversight.

Frequently asked questions

If I turn discoverability off, do I lose my saved profile data?

No. Turning discoverability off only removes you from search results. Your profile, experience, and skills remain saved exactly as you left them, and turning discoverability back on restores your visibility immediately.

Can a recruiter see my profile without revealing my contact info?

Yes. Appearing in search results and viewing your profile content does not require a reveal. Reveal credits are specifically for accessing your contact details, which is a separate, gated action.

Does my current employer get a special view of my profile?

No. There is no special access path for any particular company. Discoverability is a single global setting — on for all opted-in recruiter searches, or off for all of them. If you are concerned about a specific employer, the discoverability toggle is the control to use.

The takeaway

Profile privacy on Traceroster comes down to two gates you can reason about clearly: discoverability controls whether you show up in search at all, and reveal credits control whether your contact info is ever shared, even after you're found. Nothing is scraped, nothing is public by default, and outreach happens in-app. Check your setting in candidate profile settings, and if you want the mechanics behind how matching actually surfaces profiles once you're discoverable, read how semantic matching changes job search. To see the full model, visit Traceroster for candidates.