Terms of Use

1.About these terms

These Terms of Use are a legal agreement between you and The Apprentice Hub (ABN 86 749 370 022), a sole trader business based in Western Australia ("we", "us" and "our"). They apply to everything at theapprenticehub.com.au, including our guides, tools, downloads, the Ask a Tradie service, our email list and Apprentice Match (together, "the Service").

Please read them carefully, together with our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal information and forms part of these terms. By using the Service, or by ticking the box to agree when you create an Apprentice Match account, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service.

If you are agreeing on behalf of a business, you confirm you are authorised to bind that business, and "you" includes the business.

If you are a parent or guardian approving a profile for someone under 18, you agree to these terms on their behalf and on your own behalf, as explained in section 5.

2.Words we use

• Apprentice Match means the free matching service at theapprenticehub.com.au/match where candidates create private profiles and employers search them and send requests.
• Candidate means a person who creates an Apprentice Match profile because they are looking for an apprenticeship, traineeship or trade job.
• Employer means a person or business that creates an Apprentice Match employer account to find a candidate.
• Parent or guardian means the parent or legal guardian a candidate under 18 nominates to approve their profile.
• Request means a message an employer sends a candidate through Apprentice Match asking to make contact.
• Contact details means a candidate's name, email address and mobile number, and an employer's name, email address and phone number.
• Content means anything you add to the Service, including profile details, messages, questions, reports, business details and logos.
• Australian Consumer Law means Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth).

3.The Service is free

The Apprentice Hub and Apprentice Match are free to use for candidates, parents and guardians, and employers. We do not charge job seekers any fee to find work, and we do not take a commission or placement fee from employers.

Nobody should ever ask you to pay money, buy a course, buy equipment from them, or hand over bank or identity documents before you are genuinely employed, in order to get an apprenticeship or job through Apprentice Match. If anyone does, stop contact and report them to us straight away.

We make money from affiliate links and similar arrangements on our guides, as explained on our How we make money page, and from our optional professional resume service described in section 27. Buying a resume never affects how Apprentice Match treats you: it doesn't make your profile more visible or put you ahead of anyone else. Any other paid feature we introduce will be optional and clearly priced before you pay.

4.Who can use the Service

Anyone can read our guides. To create an Apprentice Match account you must meet these requirements, and you confirm that you do.

5.Candidates under 18, and parents and guardians

We take extra care with candidates under 18. These rules apply on top of everything else in these terms.

• When a candidate under 18 creates a profile, we email the parent or guardian they nominate. The profile stays hidden from employers unless and until that parent or guardian reads these terms and our Privacy Policy and approves.
• By approving, the parent or guardian confirms they are the candidate's parent or legal guardian, agrees to these terms and the Privacy Policy on the candidate's behalf and on their own behalf, and consents to the candidate using Apprentice Match as described.
• A parent or guardian can withdraw approval at any time using the link in their email. When they do, the profile is hidden from employers again.
• If a candidate under 18 accepts an employer's request, we email the parent or guardian to tell them which business it was.
• The candidate's date of birth is never shown to employers. Employers do not see a candidate's age.
• Nominating someone who is not your parent or guardian, or using your own email address as the parent email, breaks these terms and we will close the account.

Agreements with people under 18 can be treated differently under Australian law. That is one reason we ask a parent or guardian to agree as well. Nothing in these terms takes away any protection the law gives to young people.

6.Your account

• Give us accurate, current and complete information, and keep it up to date.
• Keep your password private and don't share your account. You are responsible for what happens in your account unless it happens because of something we did wrong.
• Tell us straight away at hello@theapprenticehub.com.au if you think someone else has accessed your account.
• Don't create an account using someone else's identity or details, or create more than one account to get around a block or a limit.
• We may ask for information to confirm who you are or that you are authorised to act for a business, and we may limit an account while we check.

7.What Apprentice Match is, and what it is not

Apprentice Match is a free introduction service. Candidates create private profiles. Verified employers search those profiles by trade and area and can send a request. If a candidate accepts, we show each side the other's contact details so they can talk directly. What happens after that is between the candidate and the employer.

Apprentice Match is not:

• an employer. We don't employ candidates, and no employment relationship exists between us and any user;
• a recruitment agency, employment agent or labour hire provider. We don't place candidates with employers, negotiate terms or supply workers;
• a group training organisation (GTO), registered training organisation (RTO) or Apprentice Connect Australia provider. We don't sign training contracts or arrange training;
• a job board with advertised vacancies. Requests from employers are not job offers;
• a background screening service. We don't check identities, references, qualifications, licences, tickets, Working with Children Checks, criminal history or right to work;
• a social network. Apprentice Match exists solely to connect people looking for an apprenticeship, traineeship or trade job with businesses offering one. There are no public profiles, feeds, posts, comments, followers or open chat, and you must not use it for social or personal purposes.

Our ABN check confirms that the ABN an employer gives us is active on the Australian Business Register at the time of the check, and shows the name it is registered to. It does not prove the person is who they say they are, that the business is reputable, or that it has work available. Candidates and parents should make their own checks before meeting anyone or starting work.

We don't guarantee that any candidate will receive a request, that any employer will find a candidate, or that any introduction will lead to an apprenticeship or a job.

8.Rules for candidates

• Only claim licences, tickets, qualifications and experience you actually have.
• Keep your "about you" note about you and your goals. Don't put contact details, links or social media handles in it. We remove them automatically, and repeatedly trying to get around this breaks these terms.
• Only accept requests you are interested in, and be respectful in all dealings with employers.
• Never pay an employer or anyone else money to get an apprenticeship or a job, and report anyone who asks.
• Meet employers somewhere safe and public, or at their business premises during business hours, and tell someone you trust where you are going. If you are under 18, involve your parent or guardian.
• Your profile is shown to employers for 90 days at a time. After that it is hidden until you confirm you are still looking.

9.Rules for employers

Employers are trusted with access to young people's profiles. These rules are strict, and breaking them can lead to your account being blocked without warning and the matter being reported to the relevant authorities.

10.Rules for everyone

When you use any part of the Service, you must not:

• break any law, or help anyone else to;
• harass, threaten, bully, intimidate, abuse, stalk, defame or discriminate against anyone;
• post or send anything sexual, violent, hateful, misleading or deceptive, or anything that infringes someone else's rights;
• pretend to be someone else, or misrepresent your connection with a person or business;
• try to find out a candidate's identity or contact details other than through an accepted request, or get around any privacy protection in the Service;
• copy, scrape, crawl, harvest or download data from the Service with bots or other automated tools, or use our content or data to build a database, train a machine learning model or create a competing service;
• interfere with or disrupt the Service, try to access accounts, data or systems you are not allowed to access, probe or test our security without our written permission, or introduce viruses or other harmful code;
• send spam, chain messages or unsolicited advertising;
• use Apprentice Match for social, dating or personal purposes, or for anything other than finding an apprenticeship, traineeship or trade job, or finding an apprentice;
• use the Service for any purpose other than the one it was built for.

If you find a security problem, please tell us at hello@theapprenticehub.com.au and don't use or share it. We appreciate responsible reports.

11.Content you add

You keep ownership of the content you add. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence, for as long as your content is on the Service and for a reasonable time after, to host, store, copy, display and process it as needed to run, protect and improve the Service, including showing your profile to verified employers, showing your business profile and logo to candidates, and sending emails about your account.

For Ask a Tradie, you give us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free licence to edit, publish and keep publishing your question and our answer on the Service and in our emails. We remove anything that could identify you if you ask to stay anonymous, and we may decide not to publish any question.

You promise that your content is accurate, that you have the right to add it, and that it doesn't break the law or these terms. We don't check all content before it appears, but we may review, edit for privacy, refuse, hide or remove any content at any time.

We automatically remove email addresses, phone numbers and links from candidate "about you" notes and employer messages to protect privacy.

12.Our content and brand

The Service, including its text, guides, checklists, downloads, designs, icons, logos, software and the name The Apprentice Hub, belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by copyright and other laws.

You can read, print and download our content for your own personal, non-commercial use, and share links to it. You can't otherwise copy, republish, sell, adapt or commercially use it without our written permission. Downloads marked as free resources may be printed and used by you and your workplace, but not resold or republished.

13.Our guides are general information only

Our guides, checklists, quizzes, answers and other content are general information to help you understand apprenticeships and the trades. They are not legal, financial, tax, industrial relations, medical, career or work health and safety advice, and they don't take your personal circumstances into account.

• Pay rates, allowances and conditions depend on your award or agreement, your age, your year of apprenticeship and other things. We don't state pay rates. Use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay Calculator or contact Fair Work for your exact rate.
• Rules differ between states and territories and change over time. We work hard to keep our content accurate and up to date, but we can't guarantee it is complete, current or correct for your situation.
• Always follow your employer's and supervisor's safety instructions, your training provider's requirements and the official sources we link to. Never rely on our content to decide whether something is safe.
• Answers in Ask a Tradie are written by The Apprentice Hub team using official sources, and are general in nature.

14.Affiliate links and other websites

Some links on our guides are affiliate links. If you buy something after clicking one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. We explain this on our How we make money page. Our recommendations are our own.

Links to other websites, retailers and services are provided for convenience. We don't control them and aren't responsible for their content, products, prices, privacy practices or availability. When you buy from a retailer, your contract is with that retailer, and your consumer rights are against them.

15.Emails from us

If you have an Apprentice Match account, we send you emails that are needed to run it, such as confirming your email, password resets, requests, replies and important changes to these terms. These are not marketing, and you can't unsubscribe from them while you have an account. Parents and guardians receive approval emails and notifications described in section 5.

We only send our email newsletter to people who sign up for it. Every newsletter includes a working unsubscribe link, and we act on unsubscribes promptly.

16.Reporting, safety and enforcement

Candidates can report a business from their account, and anyone can email hello@theapprenticehub.com.au. We review every report.

To keep the Service safe, we may take the following steps where it is reasonably necessary to protect a person, to deal with a breach of these terms, to prevent harm to the Service, or to comply with the law. For a minor breach we will usually warn you first. For a serious breach, or where someone may be at risk, we may act straight away without notice:

• review accounts, profiles, requests, messages and reports;
• hide a profile, block an employer, limit requests, suspend or close an account, or remove content;
• keep records of what happened, even after an account is deleted, where we need them to deal with a complaint, protect people or comply with the law;
• report matters to, and cooperate with, police, the eSafety Commissioner, the Fair Work Ombudsman, child protection authorities and other regulators.

We are a small team, so we can't monitor everything in real time. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 000.

17.Closing your account

You can delete your Apprentice Match account at any time from your account page. That permanently deletes your login, profile and requests, as described in our Privacy Policy. You can also pause a candidate profile at any time.

We may suspend or close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these terms, if we are required to by law, if we reasonably believe your use puts others at risk, or if we stop offering Apprentice Match. Where it is safe and reasonable to do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

Sections that by their nature should continue after your account closes, including sections 11, 13, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 26, continue to apply.

18.Changes to the Service

Apprentice Match is new, and we are improving it all the time. We may add, change, limit or remove features, or stop offering the Service, at any time. If we decide to close Apprentice Match, we will give account holders reasonable notice by email where we can, and delete their data as described in our Privacy Policy.

We aim to keep the Service available, but it may sometimes be unavailable for maintenance, upgrades or reasons beyond our control.

19.Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Some laws, including the Australian Consumer Law, give you rights and guarantees that cannot be excluded, restricted or modified by an agreement. Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any of those rights, guarantees or remedies, or any liability we have that cannot lawfully be limited. Any term that would otherwise do so is read down so it doesn't.

20.Disclaimers

Subject to section 19, and to the extent the law allows:

• the Service is provided free of charge and on an "as is" and "as available" basis;
• we don't promise that the Service will be uninterrupted, error free or secure at all times, although we take reasonable steps to keep it secure;
• we are not responsible for what candidates, parents, guardians and employers say or do, for the accuracy of what they put in their profiles, or for any offer, interview, trial, employment, training or other arrangement between them;
• we are not responsible for decisions you make based on our general information.

21.Limits on our liability

Subject to section 19:

• to the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, or for any loss of income, profit, opportunity or data, arising from your use of, or inability to use, the Service;
• to the extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss or damage caused by another user, or arising from dealings between users, including anything that happens at a meeting, interview, trial or in employment;
• where our liability for failing to comply with a consumer guarantee can be limited, it is limited, at our choice, to supplying the services again or paying the cost of having them supplied again;
• our liability is reduced to the extent that a loss was caused or contributed to by you or by someone other than us.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law. If you are under 18, nothing in sections 20 or 21 limits our liability to you for loss caused by our own negligence or our breach of these terms.

22.Employer responsibility for misuse

This section applies to employers only. It never applies to candidates, parents or guardians. If you are an employer, you are responsible for, and will compensate us for, any reasonable loss, cost (including reasonable legal costs) or liability we suffer because of a claim by another person arising from your breach of section 9 or your breach of any law in connection with your use of Apprentice Match. This does not apply to the extent the loss was caused by our own breach, negligence or misconduct.

23.Disputes between users

Any agreement or dispute between a candidate and an employer is between them. We are not a party to it. We may help where we reasonably can, for example by acting on a report, but we are not obliged to resolve it. Employment disputes can be raised with the Fair Work Ombudsman or Fair Work Commission, and apprenticeship and training disputes with your state or territory training authority.

24.Complaints and disputes with us

If you have a complaint about us or the Service, please email hello@theapprenticehub.com.au with the details. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days and aim to resolve it within 30 days. Privacy complaints are handled as set out in our Privacy Policy.

If we can't resolve it together, either of us may take the matter further, including to a court, tribunal or regulator. Nothing here stops you contacting a consumer protection agency, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner or any other regulator at any time.

25.Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes to the Service or the law. The version number and date at the top show when they last changed.

If we make a change that materially affects Apprentice Match account holders, we will tell you by email or on the site before it takes effect, and you will be asked to read and agree to the new version before you continue using your account. If you don't agree, you can delete your account at any time. Changes don't apply to anything that happened before they took effect.

26.General

• Governing law. These terms are governed by the laws of Western Australia and the Commonwealth of Australia. You and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Western Australia and courts that can hear appeals from them. This doesn't stop you relying on consumer protection laws of the state or territory you live in.
• If part of these terms is invalid. If any part is unenforceable, it is read down or removed to the minimum extent needed, and the rest continues to apply.
• No waiver. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• Transfer. You can't transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer them to someone who takes over the Service, if they agree to honour these terms and our Privacy Policy, and we will tell account holders if that happens.
• Notices. We can give you notices by email to the address on your account or on the site. You can give us notices by email to hello@theapprenticehub.com.au.
• Whole agreement. These terms and our Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service, unless we agree otherwise in writing.

27.Professional resume service

This section applies if you buy our optional professional resume service, or pay for it for someone else. It applies on top of the rest of these terms.

28.Contact us

The Apprentice Hub (ABN 86 749 370 022), a sole trader business based in Western Australia.

General enquiries, reports and complaints: hello@theapprenticehub.com.au. Privacy: privacy@theapprenticehub.com.au.