Frequently Asked Questions

LayoffLink is a free, hand-matching platform built for the specific moment after a layoff, when the fastest way back into work is almost always a referral rather than a cold application. Instead of leaving you to search a job board alone or cold-message strangers on LinkedIn, a real person on the LayoffLink team reviews your profile and actively works to connect you with a referrer or recruiter who can vouch for you internally. The platform brings together three groups in one place: candidates who recently lost a job, referrers who currently work somewhere and are willing to refer people in, and organizations and recruiters with open roles to fill. Beyond matching, LayoffLink includes a real job board, a Community Forum for advice and support, and a Layoff Radar feed tracking real industry layoff news. Everything is free to use — see Is LayoffLink free? and How does matching work?, or head straight to the job board to see what's currently open.

LayoffLink serves three groups, each with their own onboarding path and dashboard. Candidates who have recently been laid off can create a profile, upload a resume, and get matched with people who can refer them into a role — see the candidate sign-up to get started. Referrers are people currently employed somewhere who are willing to refer someone they don't necessarily know personally, based on a profile review rather than a personal favor; if that's you, the referrer sign-up walks you through it. Organizations and recruiters with open roles can post real job listings, browse the candidate directory, and invite strong-fit candidates to apply directly, starting from the recruiter sign-up. Whichever group you're in, the underlying idea is the same: people who currently have stability helping people who just lost it, instead of everyone competing for the same postings in isolation. You can read more about the reasoning behind that on our About Us page.

LinkedIn is fundamentally a directory — an enormous database of people and jobs that you have to search, filter, and cold-message yourself, with no guarantee anyone on the other end responds. LayoffLink is a hand-matching service built around one specific transition: going from "just laid off" to "referred into a new role." A real person reviews your profile alongside the referrers and recruiters active on the platform and actively tries to make an introduction, rather than leaving the entire burden of outreach on you. It's also intentionally narrower than LinkedIn: everyone on LayoffLink is there for one of three specific reasons — looking for a referral, willing to give one, or hiring — so there's less noise than a general professional network. That said, LayoffLink isn't a replacement for LinkedIn; a strong LinkedIn profile still matters for how recruiters and referrers perceive you once you're connected — see How do I get recruiters to notice my LinkedIn profile? for tips on that.

No. LayoffLink facilitates introductions between candidates and people who are willing to refer or hire them — it does not guarantee an interview, a referral, or a job offer, and it is not a staffing agency, recruiter-of-record, employer, or financial institution. A referral significantly improves your odds of getting noticed by getting your resume in front of a real person instead of an applicant tracking system alone, but the actual hiring decision always sits with the employer. What LayoffLink can do is put you in front of people willing to advocate for you internally, keep you visible to recruiters actively looking to fill roles, and connect you with a community going through the same transition. For the honest limits of what the platform does and doesn't promise, see our Disclaimer and Terms of Service.

Choose the sign-up path that matches your situation from the homepage: candidate if you're looking for a referral, referrer if you're currently employed and willing to refer people in, or organization/recruiter if you're hiring. Each path asks for your email and a password, then sends a real six-digit verification code to confirm the email is yours — check your inbox (and spam folder) right after signing up. Recruiter accounts must use a corporate email address rather than a free Gmail- or Yahoo-style address, since that's how we keep the recruiter side of the platform trustworthy for candidates. Once verified, you'll be walked through a short profile wizard specific to your role — resume and skills for candidates, company and referral preferences for referrers, or job details for recruiters — and your profile is saved for real, not just kept in your browser. You can update any of it later from your dashboard's Account menu — see Can I change my account details later?.

Use the "Forgot password" link on the login page and enter the email address your account was created with. We'll send a real, time-limited password reset link to that inbox — click it and you'll be able to set a new password immediately. If the email doesn't arrive within a few minutes, check your spam or promotions folder, and confirm you're using the exact email address you originally signed up with, since the reset only works for an address tied to an existing account. For security, we never email you your existing password directly, and the reset link expires after a period of time — if it's expired, just request a new one from the same "Forgot password" page. See How is my password stored? for why we can't simply look it up for you. If you're still stuck, our Contact Us page reaches a real person.

Yes — nothing about your profile is locked in after you sign up. From your dashboard, open the Account menu to update your name, profile picture, and password, or use "Edit Profile" to update the full profile for your role: your resume and skills as a candidate, your company and referral preferences as a referrer, or your job postings and hiring preferences as a recruiter. Updates save immediately and take effect on your public-facing profile right away, so it's worth keeping your resume and skills current — LayoffLink's candidate dashboard uses your saved skills to automatically surface better-matching jobs, see How do job recommendations work?. If you change your email address, you may need to re-verify it. For anything you can't resolve yourself, our Contact Us page reaches a real person.

Email us through the Contact Us page and we'll process the deletion — because deleting an account also means removing your saved profile, resume, and match history, we handle it manually rather than through an automatic self-service button, so we can confirm it's really you asking. See our Privacy Policy for exactly what "delete" covers, including how long any backups may briefly persist before being purged. If you're a candidate and simply want to pause being matched rather than delete everything, consider instead switching your profile's visibility to anonymous — see Who can see my profile? — that keeps your account and history intact while removing you from active matching until you're ready again.

In this early phase, matching is done by a real person on the LayoffLink team rather than a fully automated algorithm — someone reviews your candidate profile alongside the referrers and recruiters currently active on the platform and actively looks for a good fit before making an introduction. That's a deliberate choice: a human reviewing context (your background, what a referrer is actually able to vouch for, what a recruiter is genuinely hiring for right now) catches good matches a keyword algorithm alone would miss. Alongside that hand-matching, your candidate dashboard also runs a real-time automated skill match against every open job posting, so you can see at a glance which roles fit you best without waiting on a manual review — see How do job recommendations work? for that part specifically. The more complete your profile and skills list, the better both the human matching and the automated scoring work, so it's worth spending a few minutes getting it right on Gate A.

Yes. Every real job posted by an organization or referrer appears on the job board, and if you're a logged-in candidate with a resume on file, you can apply directly from a job's card or its own page — LayoffLink emails your resume straight to the person who posted it and sends you a confirmation so you know it went through. If you'd rather ask for a referral instead of applying cold, most postings also have a "Request a Referral" option, which routes your request to a referrer instead of directly to the hiring contact — see Can I request a referral for a specific job? for how that path differs. Applying doesn't require going through the full onboarding wizard again if you already have an account and a resume saved.

The Community Board is a space for any logged-in member to post a real, specific ask — for example, "Looking for Project Manager role leads in fintech" — and have other members respond directly. It sits alongside the Forum, which is organized into topic categories like Career Advice, Interview Experiences, and Referrals & Networking for longer-running discussions, rather than one-off requests. To participate, you just need a logged-in account, any role: post a request or a topic, and when someone replies, we send a real email notification so you don't have to keep the tab open waiting. It's a genuinely useful way to get help beyond formal matching — sometimes the fastest lead comes from another member who happens to know exactly the right person.

Resume upload happens during the candidate onboarding wizard (Gate A) and can be updated any time afterward from your dashboard's Edit Profile screen. We accept standard resume file types and store the file securely, attaching it automatically whenever you apply to a job or a referrer requests it — you never have to re-attach it manually each time. If you already have an account and just need to swap in an updated version, open Edit Profile, upload the new file, and it replaces the old one immediately; your existing applications keep the resume you sent at the time, but every new application or referral request goes out with the latest version. Keeping your resume current matters here specifically because it also feeds LayoffLink's automated skill matching — see How do job recommendations work?.

Separately from the hand-matching described in How does matching work?, your candidate dashboard runs a real, automatic skill comparison between your saved profile and every open job posting, scoring and sorting roles by how closely their required skills overlap with yours. Jobs you're a strong fit for are surfaced first, with a visible match percentage and a skill-by-skill breakdown showing which required skills you already have and which ones you're missing — genuinely useful for deciding whether to apply as-is or brush up on a specific skill first. This runs automatically every time you log in or update your profile; there's nothing to configure. The one thing worth knowing: the scoring is only as good as what's in your profile, so an incomplete skills list will under-match you against roles you'd actually be a strong fit for.

Right now, LayoffLink surfaces relevant jobs to you automatically on your candidate dashboard every time you log in, ranked by how well they match your saved skills — see How do job recommendations work? — rather than through a separate per-job email alert subscription. If you'd like general updates from LayoffLink — new features, notable job trends, community highlights — you can subscribe to our newsletter from the footer of any page, which sends real, occasional emails rather than a live feed of every new posting. In the meantime, the most reliable way to stay on top of new roles is checking your dashboard regularly, since new listings and referral matches appear there first. Personalized email alerts for newly matching jobs would be a genuinely useful addition — if that's something you'd want, let us know through Contact Us.

Yes. Most job postings on the board include a "Request a Referral" option alongside "Apply Now" — choosing it sends your profile and interest to a referrer connected to that posting instead of directly to the hiring contact, which is often the stronger path if you'd rather have someone vouch for you internally than apply cold. You can also request a referral more broadly by connecting with any referrer through the People directory and starting a conversation, even if they haven't posted a specific job — many referrers are willing to look for openings on your behalf once they understand your background. Either way, requests go out as a real notification to the referrer, and you'll see the outcome — accepted, declined, or pending — reflected on your dashboard rather than disappearing into silence.

Only in ways your privacy settings allow. If your candidate profile is visible ("named," see Who can see my profile?), recruiters can find you in the People directory and send a real connection request, which you can accept or decline — nothing is shared beyond your profile until you accept. Separately, if a recruiter has a specific open role you look like a strong fit for, they can use "Invite to Apply" to send you a direct invitation for that job, which again requires your action to move forward — it never auto-submits an application on your behalf. If your profile is set to anonymous, recruiters can't identify or contact you at all until you choose to reveal yourself to a specific match. In short: recruiters can reach out, but always through a real, logged, opt-in mechanism — never your personal email or phone number directly.

Yes. Any verified organization or recruiter account can post a real job listing from their dashboard — company name, role details, required skills, employment type, and optionally a referral bonus — and it appears immediately on the public job board and, for candidates who are a strong skill match, directly on their dashboard. Recruiter accounts require a corporate email address to sign up, which keeps job postings tied to a real, verifiable employer rather than anonymous or free-email accounts. Once a posting is live, recruiters can also browse the candidate directory and proactively invite strong-fit candidates to apply — see Can recruiters contact me directly?. If your organization is hiring, our recruiter sign-up is the place to start.

This is exactly the problem LayoffLink exists to solve. Traditionally, an employee referral required you to already personally know someone on the inside — which leaves most job seekers, especially right after a layoff, with no real path to one. On LayoffLink, referrers are people who've explicitly opted in to referring candidates they don't already know personally, based on reviewing an actual profile rather than a personal favor. Once you create a candidate profile with a complete resume and skills list, you become visible to referrers and recruiters browsing for a fit, and our team also actively works to match you by hand — see How does matching work?. You can also directly request a referral on any specific job posting, or connect with a referrer through the People directory. The honest fastest path to any referral, here or elsewhere, is a specific, complete profile — vague or empty profiles are much harder for anyone to vouch for.

Keep it short, specific, and easy to say yes to. Explain briefly what happened (a layoff, not a performance issue, is an easy thing for most people to sympathize with), what role or type of role you're looking for, and — if you're asking about a specific company — that you saw a posting or know they hire for that kind of role. Attach your resume so they don't have to ask for it, and make clear you understand a referral isn't a guarantee, just an introduction. On LayoffLink, this is built into the platform itself: sending a referral request through a job posting or the People directory automatically includes your saved profile and resume, so the referrer has everything they need in one message rather than a cold, vague ask. If you're wondering whether it's appropriate to ask someone you don't know well at all, see Is it okay to ask a stranger for a job referral?.

Yes — and this is genuinely different from a cold LinkedIn message, because everyone signed up as a LayoffLink referrer has explicitly opted in to being asked by people they don't already know. A referrer on this platform isn't doing you a personal favor in the traditional sense; they've chosen to review candidate profiles and refer people they think are a real fit, which is a very different ask than messaging a random employee out of the blue. That said, the same basic courtesy applies: keep your ask specific (what role, why you're a fit), make it easy for them to say no without awkwardness, and thank them regardless of the outcome. A complete, honest profile does most of the work here — referrers are far more likely to vouch for someone whose background and skills are clearly laid out than for a vague or incomplete one.

Yes, consistently — referred candidates are typically interviewed and hired faster than candidates who apply cold, largely because a referral gets a resume in front of an actual person instead of only an applicant tracking system, and because a referrer vouching for you carries real internal credibility with the hiring team. Referrals also tend to have higher offer rates once an interview happens, since the referrer has usually given the hiring manager honest context about the candidate's background before the interview even starts. That advantage is exactly why LayoffLink is built around referrals rather than just another job board — a large stack of cold applications competing against an ATS is a much harder path than one warm introduction. If you're weighing whether to apply directly or request a referral on a specific posting, see Can I apply to jobs directly? for how both options work here.

LayoffLink is one — it's entirely free for candidates, and unlike LinkedIn, it's specifically structured around referrals rather than requiring you to identify the right employee yourself and hope they respond to a cold message. Other free options include your own alumni network (many universities run referral or mentorship programs specifically for job seekers), industry-specific Slack or Discord communities, and layoff-support groups on LinkedIn itself, where people often post "willing to refer" openly. What makes a referral platform like LayoffLink different from browsing LinkedIn manually is that referrers here have already opted in to being asked by people they don't know, which removes the biggest source of friction — wondering whether it's appropriate to even ask. See Is it okay to ask a stranger for a job referral? for more on that.

If you have a LayoffLink referrer account, the simplest path is posting an open role from your dashboard, if you're aware of one, or browsing the candidate directory for someone whose background fits a role you know is open, then sending them an introduction. When a candidate requests a referral directly through a job posting, you'll get their full profile and resume in one place, so you can quickly decide whether you're comfortable vouching for them before looping in your own internal referral process. Every company handles the actual internal referral mechanics differently — some have a formal portal, others just want an email or message to the hiring manager — so LayoffLink connects you with the right candidate, but the final internal step is still whatever your employer's process requires. If you're not yet a referrer, sign up from Gate B to get started.

Many do, though it varies widely by company and role — some pay a flat bonus, more for hard-to-fill or senior roles, some pay only after the referred candidate passes a probation period, and some don't offer a formal bonus at all. When posting a job on LayoffLink, referrers can optionally note whether a referral bonus applies, so candidates have that context up front — see Can employers post jobs on LayoffLink?. If you're not sure whether your own employer pays one, it's worth checking with your HR or People team directly — referral bonus programs are common enough that most mid-size and larger companies have some version of one, even if it isn't widely advertised internally.

The single most useful thing you can do is offer a specific, concrete referral rather than a vague "let me know if I can help" — most people who've just been laid off are hesitant to ask for anything specific, so making the first move matters. If your company has an open role, share it directly and offer to submit them as a referral. If it doesn't, introduce them to someone in your network who might be hiring, or simply review and give honest feedback on their resume. Creating a LayoffLink referrer account formalizes this: you can browse real candidate profiles who are actively looking, review their background before reaching out, and refer people you don't already know personally — which often has more impact than referring only people already in your immediate circle, since it reaches people who genuinely have no other warm path in.

LayoffLink's Layoff Radar tracks real, ongoing layoff news by company and industry, so you can see where recent layoffs happened and reach out to that talent pool directly through the candidate directory rather than waiting for applications to trickle in. Because every candidate profile on the platform belongs to someone who was recently laid off and is actively looking, you're browsing a pool that's both currently available and motivated to move quickly — a meaningfully different pool than a general job board where most profiles belong to people who aren't actively searching. Once you find strong-fit candidates, "Invite to Apply" lets you reach out directly with a specific role rather than only waiting for them to find your posting. A corporate email address is required to create a recruiter account, which keeps the pool of organizations reaching out to candidates verifiable and trustworthy.

Posting a real job on LayoffLink is free — there's no subscription fee, no per-post cost, and no limit on how many roles an organization can list. Beyond posting, recruiters can browse the candidate directory directly and proactively invite strong-fit candidates to apply, which is often faster than waiting for applications on a paid job board where your posting competes with thousands of others. Because every candidate here recently went through a layoff and is realistically motivated to move, response rates to a well-targeted invite tend to be meaningfully higher than cold outreach on a general platform. If you're hiring for a specific skill set, filtering the directory by skills and reviewing full profiles before reaching out, rather than relying purely on inbound applications, is usually the most efficient use of a recruiter's time here.

In the first few days, prioritize the practical over the productive: confirm your last paycheck and any severance details in writing, understand your health insurance options and the exact date coverage ends, and file for unemployment benefits promptly if you're eligible, since most programs have processing delays. Collect your final pay stub, any performance reviews, and contact information for colleagues who might act as references or referrers before you lose access to your work email and systems — see What documents should I collect before leaving my job? for a fuller list. Once the logistics are handled, update your resume while the details of your work are still fresh, and turn on visibility (LinkedIn's "Open to Work," a LayoffLink candidate profile) so opportunities can start finding you while you're also actively searching. It's also worth giving yourself a short, deliberate window before diving into applications, since a rushed first wave usually performs worse than a slightly slower, well-targeted one.

In many cases, yes — severance offers are often more negotiable than people assume, especially if you're asked to sign a release of claims in exchange for it, since that release has real value to the employer. Common things to negotiate include the severance amount or number of weeks covered, the continuation of health benefits, whether unused vacation or PTO is paid out, the wording of any reference the company will give, and outplacement support like resume or career coaching. Before signing anything, read the agreement carefully, or have an employment lawyer review it, especially for senior roles or larger packages, and understand exactly what rights you're giving up in exchange. Even a modest, respectful counter-offer is sometimes accepted, particularly at companies going through a larger layoff where there's a standard package with some flexibility built in. Whatever you negotiate, get the final terms in writing before you sign.

Yes, briefly and matter-of-factly — trying to hide or dance around it usually reads as more suspicious than the layoff itself. A short, honest explanation ("the company went through a round of layoffs affecting my team") is easy for most interviewers to understand, especially in periods with widespread industry layoffs, and takes far less time than an evasive non-answer. Keep it brief, don't editorialize about the company or your former manager, and pivot quickly back to what you're looking for next and why you're a good fit for this specific role. See How do I answer "Why were you laid off?" in an interview? for a more complete answer you can adapt.

A layoff, sometimes called a reduction in force, ends your employment because of the employer's own circumstances — restructuring, cost-cutting, a department being eliminated — and has nothing to do with your individual performance. A termination, often called being fired, ends your employment because of something specific to you: performance issues, policy violations, or conduct. The distinction matters practically: layoffs are far more common to disclose openly in interviews and rarely raise concern, they're usually accompanied by severance and sometimes outplacement support, and they typically don't affect eligibility for unemployment benefits the way some terminations can. If you're ever unsure which one applies to your own situation, your separation paperwork or exit letter should state the reason explicitly — worth confirming in writing if it wasn't clearly stated to you at the time.

Before you lose access to company systems, gather your final pay stub, any formal performance reviews or written recognition, your separation or layoff notice (which should state the reason for your departure), COBRA or benefits continuation paperwork, and personal contact information for colleagues, managers, or clients you'd like to stay in touch with. It's also worth saving copies of any work you're proud of and legally able to keep — writing samples, project summaries, portfolio pieces — since you'll lose access to your work accounts. If you're owed unused vacation or PTO payout, confirm the amount and expected payment date in writing. None of this needs to feel adversarial — it's simply easier to gather everything cleanly on your way out than to request it later once you no longer have a relationship with HR.

An ATS-friendly resume is formatted so applicant tracking system software — the tool most companies use to scan, filter, and rank resumes before a human ever sees them — can correctly read and parse it. That means using standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills), a single-column layout without text boxes or tables, common fonts, and avoiding images or headers/footers that contain important information, since many ATS platforms simply can't read text inside them. It also means including the actual keywords from the job description in your resume's text, since most ATS software ranks resumes partly on keyword match. A resume can be visually clean and still fully ATS-friendly — the two aren't in conflict, it just means keeping the underlying structure simple. See Does an ATS actually read PDF resumes?, and upload your resume to your profile once it's ready — see How do I upload my resume?.

A short, honest explanation is almost always the right move — a one-line note ("Company-wide layoff, [Month Year]–present: job searching") on your resume or a brief mention in your LinkedIn About section removes the guesswork for anyone reviewing it, and gaps caused by layoffs are common enough now that they rarely raise real concern on their own. If you used part of the gap productively — freelance work, a certification, caregiving, volunteering — it's worth including briefly, but you don't need to manufacture busyness to justify a gap; being laid off and actively searching is a complete, sufficient explanation by itself. What matters more to most interviewers than the gap itself is how you talk about it: brief, factual, and forward-looking rather than defensive. See Should I mention being laid off during interviews? for how to carry that same tone into a live conversation.

Most modern applicant tracking systems handle PDFs correctly, but not all of them do, and it depends heavily on how the PDF was created. A PDF exported directly from a word processor as real, selectable text is almost always parsed correctly. A PDF that's actually a scanned image, or one built with heavy design elements, columns, text boxes, or unusual fonts, can come through as garbled or completely unreadable text to an ATS even though it looks fine to a human. If you're unsure, open your resume PDF and try selecting and copying the text with your cursor — if it copies cleanly as readable text in the right order, it will almost always parse correctly. When in doubt, a standard Word (.docx) file is the safest universal format, since it's what most ATS platforms were originally built to read.

The most common causes, roughly in order of likelihood: your resume isn't tailored to the specific role's keywords and is getting filtered out by an ATS before a human sees it, you're applying broadly instead of targeting roles you're genuinely a strong match for, your resume doesn't clearly show measurable impact from past work, or you're relying entirely on cold applications instead of any warm path in. It's worth auditing all four before assuming the market itself is the problem. A referral changes this dynamic more than almost anything else, since it routes your resume to an actual person instead of purely through an ATS filter — see Do employee referrals actually help you get hired faster?. If you've been applying broadly with little response, narrowing your search to fewer, more targeted applications usually outperforms a higher volume of generic ones.

Keep it to two or three sentences: state plainly that it was a layoff, not a performance issue — a company-wide restructuring, department closure, or cost-cutting round, whichever is true — then pivot immediately to what you're looking for next. Something like: "My team was affected by a company-wide layoff in [month] — it wasn't performance-related, the whole department was restructured. I'm looking for [type of role] where I can [specific value you bring]." Avoid criticizing your former employer or manager, even if you feel justified — it rarely helps and can raise a small flag about how you'll talk about this company later. If the layoff is recent and you're asked why you haven't found something yet, it's fine to say you've been selective about finding the right fit — that's a genuinely reasonable answer.

For most people, yes. The public version tells your entire network — including anyone reviewing your profile, like a referrer or recruiter — that you're actively looking, which increases the odds someone in your existing network thinks of you when they hear about an opening. LinkedIn also has a private version, visible only to recruiters using LinkedIn's recruiting tools and not to your current employer or connections, which is the safer option if you're job searching while still employed elsewhere. The main downside of the public badge is optics if you're currently employed and don't want your employer to notice — otherwise, there's little real cost to turning it on, and it's one of the lowest-effort ways to increase inbound interest while you're also actively applying and requesting referrals through LayoffLink.

Recruiters typically search LinkedIn by specific keywords — job titles, skills, tools, certifications — so the single highest-impact change is making sure those exact terms appear naturally in your headline, About section, and experience descriptions, not just implied. A headline that states your target role and top skills, rather than just your last job title, performs better than a generic one, and a complete profile (photo, About section, detailed experience bullets with measurable results) ranks higher in LinkedIn's own search than a sparse one. Turning on "Open to Work" also puts you directly in front of recruiters actively searching that filter — see Should I turn on the "Open to Work" badge on LinkedIn?. Beyond your profile itself, being genuinely active — commenting thoughtfully on posts in your industry — keeps you visible in recruiters' feeds even between active searches.

Yes — LayoffLink is entirely free for all three groups: candidates, referrers, and organizations/recruiters. There's no subscription fee, no cost per job posting, no fee to request or make a referral, and no premium tier that unlocks features the free version doesn't have — every feature described across this FAQ, from resume upload and automated job matching to posting jobs and browsing the candidate directory, is available to every account at no cost. We also don't take any percentage of a referral bonus or salary you receive as a result of a match made through the platform. If you ever see anything on the site implying otherwise, or receive a message claiming payment is required, please report it immediately — see Someone claiming to be LayoffLink asked me for payment — is that real?.

No, not currently. Every feature on LayoffLink — hand-matching, automated skill-based job recommendations, unlimited job postings for recruiters, the candidate directory, the Forum and Community Board — is available to every account at the same free tier, with no locked "premium" version. If that changes in the future, it would apply to new features added on top of what already exists, not by taking away anything currently free. For now, the honest answer is simply: everything you see described in this FAQ is free to use today.

You control this directly from your candidate profile settings. Setting your profile to "named" makes your name and details visible to referrers and recruiters browsing the directory, which is what allows them to find and reach out to you proactively. Setting it to "anonymous" keeps your identity hidden from everyone until you personally choose to reveal yourself to a specific match — you can still be hand-matched and receive referral opportunities while anonymous, you just stay unidentified in the directory itself. Either way, your resume and full profile details are never shared with a specific referrer or recruiter until you've engaged with them directly — accepting a connection request, requesting a referral, or applying to their posting — browsing the public directory alone never exposes your resume or contact details. Full details are in our Privacy Policy.

No. We don't sell your personal data, resume, or profile information to third parties, and we don't share it with advertisers. The information you provide is used only to operate the platform itself — matching you with referrers or recruiters, sending the notifications you'd expect (a reply to your post, a connection request, an application confirmation), and improving the service. Any third-party tools we use to run the site, like email delivery or basic analytics, process data strictly to provide that functionality, not to resell it. For the complete, specific breakdown of what's collected and how it's used, see our full Privacy Policy.

Yes, within the same real security standards any legitimate web platform should meet. Passwords are never stored or visible in plain text — they're run through WordPress's standard cryptographic hashing, so even we can't see your actual password, see How is my password stored?. Your resume and profile data are stored on the platform's servers and are only shared with a specific referrer or recruiter once you've actually engaged with them — a connection, referral request, or application — never exposed broadly just by having an account. We also apply standard web security practices like secure headers and validated form submissions across the site. If you ever discover a genuine security issue, see How do I report a security issue? — we take responsible disclosure seriously and want to know.

Through WordPress's standard, industry-common password hashing — your password is run through a one-way cryptographic hash before it's ever stored, which means the actual password itself is never saved anywhere, including in our own database. Nobody on the LayoffLink team, including support staff, can look up or "recover" your existing password, which is exactly why a forgotten password requires a reset link rather than an email with your old password in it — see I forgot my password — what do I do?. This is the same underlying approach used by the large majority of legitimate web platforms, and it's a meaningful part of why we'd never ask you for your password over email or in a support message — if anyone ever does, claiming to be LayoffLink, that's not really us.

Email us directly through Contact Us with a clear description of what you found, the steps to reproduce it if possible, and your contact information so we can follow up. We take responsible disclosure seriously — please report a genuine issue to us privately before discussing it publicly, and give us reasonable time to investigate and fix it. We won't take action against anyone reporting a security issue in good faith. See our Security & Trust page for more on how we handle this and what's already in place.

Start with our Help & Support page, which covers the most common issues directly. If that doesn't resolve it, email us through Contact Us with as much detail as you can: what page you were on, what you were trying to do, what actually happened, and, if possible, a screenshot. That level of detail makes it much faster for us to reproduce and fix the issue rather than guessing. Also worth trying first: refreshing the page, checking you're logged in if the feature requires it, and trying a different browser if something visual looks broken, since that quickly narrows down whether it's a site issue or a local one.

It shouldn't be — LayoffLink is built to work properly on phones, tablets, and desktops, and mobile layout issues are treated as real bugs, not an accepted limitation. If something looks cut off, overlapping, or unusable on your phone, please report it through Contact Us with the specific page, your phone model or browser, and ideally a screenshot — that's exactly the kind of report that gets fixed quickly rather than sitting unnoticed. In the meantime, if a specific page is giving you trouble on mobile, switching to a desktop browser is a reasonable temporary workaround while we look into it.

No. LayoffLink doesn't charge candidates, referrers, or organizations any fees — not for creating an account, posting a job, requesting or making a referral, or using any feature described in this FAQ. We also don't take a percentage of any referral bonus, signing bonus, or salary you receive as a result of a connection made through the platform. If you're ever asked to pay anything in connection with LayoffLink, that request didn't come from us — see Someone claiming to be LayoffLink asked me for payment — is that real?.

No — LayoffLink never asks for payment, banking details, or any fee from candidates, referrers, or organizations, under any circumstance. If you receive a message, email, or call claiming to represent LayoffLink and asking for money, personal financial information, or payment to "unlock" a match or job offer, it is not legitimate and did not come from us. Don't respond, don't provide any information, and please report it to us immediately through Contact Us so we can warn other members and, where possible, take action. This kind of impersonation scam isn't unique to LayoffLink — it's worth applying the same caution to any job platform: legitimate hiring and referral processes never require you to pay.

Since LayoffLink is entirely free, there's no subscription or paid plan to formally "cancel" — the equivalent action is deleting your account, which you can do by emailing us through Contact Us. See How do I delete my account? for the full process and what deletion covers. If you'd rather just pause activity without losing your saved profile and history, switching your visibility to anonymous, for candidates, is a lighter-weight option that keeps your account intact — see Who can see my profile?.

LayoffLink doesn't charge for anything — no account fees, no job posting fees, no percentage of any referral bonus or salary — so there's genuinely nothing to refund. If you ever see a charge referencing LayoffLink on a statement, it wasn't made by us; please report it through Contact Us right away, since that would indicate either an error or an impersonation attempt — see Someone claiming to be LayoffLink asked me for payment — is that real?.