Frequently asked questions

Seen is a hiring transparency platform that scores companies by how they actually treat applicants. We aggregate applicant accounts — submitted to Seen, plus public review-site and discussion accounts (labeled and down-weighted) — into a 0–100 transparency score, ghost rate, and response rate for any company you look up. Hundreds of companies carry a grade today; any company can be looked up and self-fills from public sources. Ghost-surge signals (3+ ghosted reports in 7 days) show on your dashboard for the companies you are waiting on.

Yes. Company grades and ghost rates, the community feed, job search, the tracker and its check-ins, and résumé match are free forever, with no card. Two things cost money, and only once: Interview Prep is $9.99 for one interview; the Job Search Pass is $19.99 for 30 days of everything, including Interview Prep for every interview. Both are one-time and never renew. You can also earn Pro time for free by reporting outcomes from your tracker and by inviting friends.

Indeed is paid by employers — which is why ghost jobs exist and never get removed. Glassdoor covers general company culture. Seen focuses exclusively on the hiring process: do they respond, how long does it take, which stage do they ghost at. We also flag ghost surges on your dashboard for the companies you are waiting on — something neither platform does.

Brandon, Seen's founder, in California. He built it after months of applying to jobs that were never really open, finishing unpaid assessments nobody answered, and watching good candidates lose a season to companies that had stopped hiring. Seen is independent and bootstrapped: no employer pays for placement, and no score has ever changed for money. He reads every message sent to hello@seenjobs.io.

Email hello@seenjobs.io — or use the contact page, which says what to include. A person answers within two business days.

Scores start at a neutral 50, then add response rate (×40), subtract ghost rate (×30) and average wait (up to −15), and add a small log-scale bonus for the trust-weighted volume of evidence (capped at +10). Reports submitted to Seen count fully; public review-site and discussion accounts count at reduced weight; admin-confirmed dead listings apply a bounded penalty. No company is graded until it has at least one real applicant account (sent to Seen or posted publicly) and five in total (an online mention counts as half). The letter follows fixed bands: A for 90 and up, B for 80–89, C for 70–79, D for 60–69 and F below 60, each with a plus or minus step. All scores are expressions of aggregated applicant claims, not verified facts.

A ghost surge is detected when a company receives 3 or more "ghosted" reports within a 7-day rolling window — meaningfully more than its recent baseline. Surges appear on your dashboard for the companies you have open applications with. They flag deteriorating hiring behavior so you can factor it into your follow-ups. Note: a surge can reflect seasonal patterns or a small number of reports — treat it as a signal, not a verdict.

Wasted-effort risk estimates how likely an application is to go nowhere. For a company it is modeled from the reported ghost rate, interview rounds and unpaid-work rate; for a listing it is modeled from signals in the posting itself (staffing-intermediary language, unpaid or commission-only terms, missing pay, which ATS it runs on). It is a model, not a tally of people saying it wasted their time.

Because they are effectively different employers. A franchise in Irvine, CA is owned and operated differently from one in Chicago, IL. Their hiring practices can differ dramatically. Today Seen scores the company as a whole and shows the per-city breakdown of reported outcomes on the company page's Locations tab; separate per-location scores are not computed yet.

Yes. Every new report triggers a recalculation. If a company improves their hiring practices and applicants report better experiences, their score rises. Scores are not permanent — they reflect current behavior.

Yes. We do not collect your name, email, or any identifying information with anonymous reports. If you are signed in, the report is linked to your account so we can prevent duplicate submissions and let you see your own outcomes; it is never shown with your name or email. Anonymous (signed-out) reports carry no account link and are held for review before they count. We will never share who reported what with employers.

Describe what actually happened during your application: how long you waited, which stage you reached, whether you were ghosted, and any relevant details about the job description versus reality. Avoid naming specific individual employees — focus on the company's process. Positive reports are just as valuable as negative ones.

Every report that passes the anti-gaming checks updates the company's score, ghost rate and response rate as soon as it is saved. A report you submit today helps the next person who checks that company decide whether to apply. The more reports a company has, the more reliable its score becomes. It takes 60 seconds.

Yes. When you report what happened with an application on your tracker (ghosted, rejected, an interview, an offer), you get 3 days of Seen Pro. It is the same for every outcome, so the reward never pushes anyone toward one answer. It counts once per application, only when the application has been on your tracker for at least 7 days, and up to 15 days a month (California time). Rewards never change how a report is weighted or how a company is graded. Days are added after any Pro time you already have.

Your invite link is on your dashboard and in Settings. When a friend signs up with it and tracks their first application, you both get 7 days of Seen Pro. You are rewarded for up to 10 friends; after that your friends still get their days. A link only counts for a new account, within 30 days of signing up, and never for your own account. Earned Pro time ends on its own: nothing renews and nothing is charged.

Not from the site yet. If you were signed in when you reported, the report is linked to your account, so email hello@seenjobs.io from that account's address and we can correct or remove it. A signed-out report carries no account link, so we cannot verify who sent it — if one contains an error or personal information, email us and we review it manually.

The most effective thing is to improve your hiring practices — respond to applicants, close listings when roles are filled, and be honest about your process. Scores update in real time as new reports come in. You can also get Verified, which shows job seekers you're committed to transparency.

Email hello@seenjobs.io with the specific content, the reason it violates our guidelines (factual inaccuracy, personal information, or clear fabrication), and supporting evidence. We review within 14 business days. We do not remove reports simply because they are negative — negative experiences are protected speech and the core data this platform is built on.

No. We do not accept money to improve a company's transparency score or placement. Verified badges appear in search but do not override scores. The data is never for sale.