Terms of use and of sale

This is a translation provided for convenience. Only the French version has legal effect. In the event of any discrepancy, the French text prevails.

Article 1, purpose

Tierless is a service that connects companies looking for an independent consultant with independent consultants looking for an assignment.

Tierless is not an employer, nor a temporary work agency, nor a placement agency, nor a party to the services contract. Tierless takes no part in the negotiation, enters into no contract, does not invoice the work and receives no commission on it.

The services contract is entered into directly between the company and the consultant, under their sole responsibility.

Article 2, who may sign up

The service is reserved for professionals. Consultants and companies alike sign up in the course of their professional activity. No user acts as a consumer, and the service is not aimed at private individuals.

2.1 Consultants

Any individual carrying on a declared independent activity, or running a company providing professional services, may sign up free of charge.

The consultant warrants that the information on their profile is accurate, and in particular their experience, their skills, their day rate and their availability.

2.2 Companies: the end-client rule

Only the companies where the work is actually carried out may post an assignment.

The following are excluded, without this list being exhaustive: IT services firms, consultancies, umbrella companies, recruitment agencies, search firms, brokers, introducers, and any entity whose purpose would be to place the consultant with a third party.

On signing up, the company expressly declares that any assignment it posts will be carried out within it and that it will contract directly with the consultant. This declaration is time-stamped and kept.

Grounds for refusing a registration. Tierless may refuse a registration where:

• the declared activity, activity code or corporate purpose is one of intermediation: IT services, recruitment consulting, umbrella companies, headhunting, broking, business introduction;
• the company has no verifiable legal existence in the public records;
• the information provided is plainly inaccurate;
• an account previously suspended on the same grounds is connected to the same people.

Grounds for withdrawing an assignment or suspending an account. Tierless may withdraw a posted assignment, or suspend the account that posted it, where:

• the assignment is not carried out within the company that posted it;
• the posting is in fact a search on behalf of a third party;
• the published content is unlawful, discriminatory or infringes the rights of others;
• the end-client declaration proves inaccurate.

The grounds are given to the company concerned, and the decision is recorded. The consultants who applied are told that the assignment has been withdrawn, and nothing else: they have no business carrying a judgement passed on someone else.

Suspension or termination takes effect without notice or refund.

Article 3, how the service works

3.1 Profiles and anonymity

A consultant's profile is shown to companies without their name or contact details. The identity is only revealed when a company opens a conversation.

Tierless uses technical means to remove identifying elements from the text it displays, without being able to guarantee a perfect result. The consultant remains responsible for what they write.

3.1 bis Texts are published as they were written

Tierless rewrites no text. A consultant's text and the job description a company uploads are both published as they were written. Tierless extracts short facts from them: the title, the category, the region, the work arrangement, the start date, the duration and the day rate, in order to place them in comparable lists, and does not touch the words.

The company answers for the content of the posting it publishes, including its accuracy, its compliance with employment and non-discrimination law, and whatever it leaves in it. It can edit the text at any time from its account, before and after publication, and restore the text it uploaded.

3.2 Matching

The order in which profiles appear rests on objective criteria and on a measure of how close the stated need and the profile are. It is neither an assessment, nor a recommendation, nor a guarantee of competence.

Matching is automatic. No decision is. The platform brings texts closer together and orders a list; it holds no one back, rules no one out on a company's behalf, and does not recruit. It is the company that reads, that chooses whom to open a conversation with, and that decides. No automated processing produces legal effects concerning a consultant within the meaning of article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation.

Tierless rates, ranks and promotes no consultant, and offers no paid option to improve visibility.

How the lists are ordered. Two conditions, and two only, keep a profile out of a match: the day rate, where it exceeds the ceiling stated by the assignment by more than ten per cent, and availability, where it falls more than a month after the stated start date. These are matters of fact, not judgements.

The remaining profiles are ordered by how close the assignment's text and the profile's text are, measured automatically. That order does not say one consultant is better than another: it says which one most resembles the need described. Where closeness is equal, the most recent availability confirmation comes first.

3.3 Checks

Tierless verifies that registered companies legally exist, from public records. Tierless neither verifies nor certifies consultants' skills, experience, qualifications, insurance or compliance with social security and tax obligations.

It is for the company to carry out the checks that fall to it, in particular its duty of vigilance.

3.4 Conversations

A conversation may only be opened by a subscribing company, and only with a consultant who has applied to one of its assignments.

Tierless hosts the messages without moderating them, without chasing either party and without taking part in the exchange. The parties may pass each other their contact details if they wish.

3.5 Availability of profiles

A consultant confirms their availability every fifteen days. Failing that, their profile stops appearing in the results until it is confirmed.

Article 4, subscriptions and payment

4.1 Free for consultants

Using Tierless is free for consultants, with no limit of time or of function, and with no commission whatsoever on the assignments they obtain.

4.2 Company subscriptions

Posting assignments and reading applications are free. Opening conversations requires a subscription, whose prices are set out on the pricing page.

Two plans, your choice. The monthly subscription is paid each month. The yearly subscription is paid once, upfront, for twelve months, and costs eleven monthly payments.

Prices are exclusive of tax. Applicable tax is added in accordance with the regulations in force.

4.3 Payment

Payment is made by card at the time of subscription, then at each renewal, monthly or yearly depending on the plan chosen.

4.4 Term and cancellation

The monthly subscription has no minimum term. It renews tacitly each month and may be cancelled at any time from the company account. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current month, with no pro-rata refund.

The yearly subscription is paid upfront for twelve months. It may be cancelled at any time, but cancellation gives rise to no refund, not even in part: the subscription runs to its term, and only the renewal stops. That is the counterpart of the free month.

4.5 No right of withdrawal

As subscriptions are taken out by professionals in the course of their business, the right of withdrawal applicable to consumers does not apply.

Article 5, liability

5.0 What Tierless is not

Tierless is not a party to any contract entered into between a company and a consultant. The services contract is formed between them alone, on terms they alone agree, and Tierless knows neither its terms nor its performance.

Tierless is not an employer, an umbrella company, a recruitment agency, a broker, a business introducer, nor an agent of either party. Tierless does not negotiate, does not invoice the work, collects nothing on anyone's behalf, and takes no commission on the assignments obtained.

The document templates and activity reports the platform offers are tools, made available so that no one has to build them again. They are not legal advice, not an approval, and not an undertaking by Tierless. The parties remain free to change them, replace them or ignore them, and answer alone for what they sign.

5.1 What Tierless is not answerable for

As Tierless is not a party to the services contract, Tierless is not answerable for:

• the accuracy of the information published by users;
• the quality, the timeliness or the conformity of the work carried out;
• either party's failures, including as regards payment;
• whether an assignment actually goes ahead;
• disputes arising between a company and a consultant.

Tierless offers no guarantee of outcome, whether as to the number of applications received, the quality of the profiles, or the obtaining of an assignment.

5.2 Availability of the service

Tierless uses reasonable means to keep the service available, without guaranteeing that it will never be interrupted. Interruptions for maintenance are announced where that is possible.

5.3 Cap

In any event, Tierless's liability towards a subscribing company shall not exceed the amounts paid over the last twelve months.

Article 6, content and ownership

Users keep ownership of the content they publish. They grant Tierless a limited, free and non-exclusive licence to display it, to structure it and to transmit it as part of the service.

The texts you write are neither rewritten nor translated: your headline, your summary and your experience appear in the language you wrote them in, and a note tells readers of the other language so. Assignment texts posted by a company are translated, and the translation is marked as such with access to the original.

Day-rate data is used, in aggregate and anonymous form, to feed the rate benchmarks. No individual rate is ever published, and no figure is made public below five observations.

Users undertake not to extract or reuse systematically all or part of the platform's data.

Article 7, prohibited conduct

The following are prohibited in particular: posting an assignment on behalf of a third party, creating several accounts to get around the end-client rule, publishing inaccurate information, extracting data in bulk, approaching users for purposes other than those of the service, and circumventing the platform's technical mechanisms.

Any breach may lead to the account being suspended or terminated without notice.

Article 8, personal data

The processing of personal data is described in the privacy policy, which forms an integral part of these terms.

Article 9, changes

Tierless may change these terms. Users are informed at least thirty days before a substantial change takes effect. Using the service after that date counts as acceptance.

Article 10, governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by French law.

In the event of a dispute, the parties will seek an amicable solution. As all users are professionals, no consumer mediation scheme applies.

Failing agreement, jurisdiction is given to the courts in the district of Tierless's registered office, subject to the mandatory rules that apply.