Offer letters and AI confidentiality: what a job offer gives away in ChatGPT or Claude.

The offer letter is the document the whole search has been building towards, and agencies often draft it for the client from the agreed terms. It carries the candidate’s home address, the package, a sign-on payment worked out from what they will give up at their current employer, the conditions of the offer, and sometimes the agency’s own drafting notes. Consultants paste the draft into ChatGPT or Claude to polish the wording. This page marks every item in a routine offer letter that the Privacy Act and the client relationship touch, and shows how the same letter is drafted on Ermos inside the agency.

The offer letter

Drafted when the client has chosen a candidate and the package is agreed, usually the same day, and sent by the client or by the agency on its behalf. It is the moment the candidate and the client are most exposed to each other.

An invented offer letter. All people and companies are fictional. Hover or tap any highlighted item for the analysis; the full list is below.

What leaves the agency

1. 1
   The candidate and her home address

   A named person at a residential address. Personal information, and the information a fraudster needs to impersonate an employer. Privacy Act guide.

2. 2
   Role, manager, location and start date

   The position, the reporting line and the date the candidate will leave her current employer. Tells her employer exactly when she goes if the letter surfaces.

3. 3
   Salary and allowance

   The agreed package. Personal information once it relates to an identifiable person, and the client’s commercial information. Privacy Act guide.

4. 4
   A sign-on payment and her current bonus

   A payment calibrated to the bonus she will forgo, which discloses her current package, and a statement of her notice owed to another employer. Privacy Act guide.

5. 5
   Conditions: references, police check and right to work

   A national police check can only be run with the individual’s consent, according to the ACIC (apart from limited law enforcement, immigration and administration of justice purposes), and the applicant must also permit the employer to use the result. A check result would be criminal record information, which is sensitive information under the Privacy Act, and the NSW rules on spent convictions bear on what an employer may ask. Privacy Act guide.

6. 6
   Probation, notice and a restraint

   Terms that bind the candidate after she joins. The employer’s standard terms, specific here to one person.

7. 7
   A deadline and a counter-offer instruction

   A date and a request to call before answering her employer. It tells a competitor how the client expects to be pre-empted.

8. 8
   The signatory

   Ties the letter to a named manager who has authority to bind the company.

9. 9
   The agency’s fee note

   A draft note that reveals the agency’s fee on this placement. Commercial information about the agency and the client, left in a draft that is meant to go to one party only.

What happens in Frontier Models (ChatGPT, Claude)

• The whole document is transmitted to the provider’s servers. On personal plans the user cannot choose where it is stored or processed, and for the major providers that has generally meant outside Australia, under that country’s legal process. Some business plans offer storage in Australia, but the provider still receives the content.
• On consumer tiers, prompts can be retained and used to train future models.
• The provider’s staff and systems can reach the content under the provider’s own policies.
• Once sent, the agency no longer controls it. Retention and deletion happen on the provider’s terms.

The same document on Ermos

Part of AI data leakage in recruitment agencies.

Common questions