This FAQ focuses on product-specific questions about Contact Vault, applicant privacy, replies, and inbox control. For the broader concept, read our guide to anonymous job applications.
Contact Vault was built to solve the same problems applicants keep running into: wasted time, anxiety, privacy loss, and weak or missing feedback. It gives applicants a specialized mailbox for job communication, plus technical guardrails around sending, replies, and abuse prevention.
You enter the employer name and email address, write the message yourself, add structured résumé data, and confirm the send from your own mailbox. Contact Vault then sends the message from an applicant-side Contact Vault address. Replies return to that Contact Vault mailbox and appear in your applicant inbox, which gives you privacy without giving up the practical benefit of faster clarity.
No. Contact Vault is applicant-side email infrastructure. We do not operate an employer marketplace, employer dashboard product, recruiting broker service, or marketing platform.
Employers do not see your personal email address by default. They see the Contact Vault mailbox address used for that conversation, but they may still identify you from the information you include or connect the application to you later if you apply directly with matching details.
No. Every message is individually written, addressed, and confirmed by the applicant. Contact Vault does not run campaigns, mailing lists, prospecting sequences, or employer marketing on anyone’s behalf.
Only temporarily, and only as long as needed for delivery, replies, session access, and abuse prevention. After that, data is deleted according to the retention schedule described in our legal pages.
Messages travel over encrypted channels, your personal email address is not exposed by default, and applicant access uses mailbox-based magic links and signed sessions. Contact Vault does not sell or reshare applicant data.
For applicants who want to make first contact without exposing their personal inbox immediately. It is especially useful if you want to save time, reduce stress, and improve the odds of getting a clear response before revealing more personal information.
No. You enter the employer name and email address yourself. The active product is built for applicant-initiated first contact, not for employer onboarding.
Not yet. To maximize privacy, Contact Vault currently uses structured résumé fields only. File uploads may be added later with the same guardrails and retention controls.
Each employer email contains four outcome buttons: Interested, Not moving forward, Please apply via our portal, and Role already filled. Each button opens the employer’s own mail client addressed to a dedicated Contact Vault reply address tied to that application, so the chosen outcome can be recorded without relying on editable subject or body text. That gives applicants a better chance of receiving usable feedback or at least a clear outcome instead of silence.
No. The structured outcome is locked by the first valid outcome-button reply. Employers can still send an ordinary email reply in the same conversation, but they cannot keep changing the structured outcome classification.
No. Contact Vault protects your first-contact email layer. It does not automatically anonymize your CV, cover letter, portfolio, phone number, LinkedIn profile, or the information you choose to enter into an application.
Blind recruitment is usually employer-side. The employer or hiring platform removes identity markers before screening. Contact Vault is applicant-side. It helps applicants keep their personal email private during early job application communication.
