General Conditions of Use of the Career Portal for Applicants 

Last revised: 05/2024

1. Scope of application, changes to the conditions of use

1.1. Mesago Messe Frankfurt GmbH, Rotebühlstraße 83-85, 70178 Stuttgart (hereinafter referred to as “Mesago”) provides an online portal for job advertisements (hereinafter referred to as “career portal”) for applicants on this website. The use of certain services requires registration by the user. The contractual use of these services and the user contract to be concluded by the user are governed exclusively by the following “General Conditions of Use of the Career Portal for Applicants” (“GCU”). 

1.2. These GCU apply to prospective applicants for job advertisements who are consumers. A consumer is any natural person who concludes the user contract with Mesago for purposes which cannot be mainly attributed to their commercial or independent professional activity. 

1.3. Mesago reserves the right to amend these GCU if there is an objective reason and taking legitimate interests and the reasonableness for the users into account. Notwithstanding this, Mesago may terminate the user contract extraordinarily giving reasonable notice if the amendment to the GCU is due to mandatory legal requirements or supreme court rulings which make it unreasonable for Mesago to continue the contractual relationship on the basis of the GCU previously accepted by the user.

2. Registration, user contract, user account

2.1. Conclusion of the user contract is required for the use of extended functions of the career portal (Section 3.). The user contract is concluded when the user registers and Mesago confirms this registration. Simply searching and viewing job advertisements is possible without registration.

2.2. The user can register by entering the data required in the registration form (incl. name and e-mail address) and a password to be set during the registration process. At the same time, the user is to agree to these GCU which form the basis of the user contract. The user then receives an e-mail requesting them to confirm their e-mail address using an activation link (double opt-in/DOI). Confirmation of the e-mail address completes the registration process and the user contract between Mesago and the respective user is concluded. 

2.3. On conclusion of the user contract, an account is created for the user. The user can log into their account with their e-mail address and a password set by them (“log-in”). In the account, the user can view their registration data and, if necessary, add further personal data. 

2.4. The user is obliged to make any necessary updates to their account themselves and to keep the data transmitted up to date. 

2.5. Activation of the account does not mean that the user is entitled to certain services. Mesago is authorised to make changes to the career portal and the functions and content provided to a reasonable extent, insofar as the changes serve the further development of the portal or are technically (e.g. to increase the availability of the portal) or legally necessary.

2.6. Use of the services is fundamentally free of charge, unless Mesago explicitly states that a fee is payable.

3. Subject of the contract and services

3.1. Successful registration and creation of an account as described in Section 2 gives the user access to the content and special services available via the career portal. These services especially include bookmarking job advertisements, saving searches and a search agent. 

3.2. Mesago does not provide any placement services or agency-like services via the career portal, but merely provides its users with a platform for placing and viewing job advertisements. The drafting and securing as well as the establishment of a subsequent contractual relationship between the interested applicant and the employer user with respect to a job advertised on the career portal remains the sole concern of the interested applicant and the employer user. Mesago is not party to this transaction, nor is it in any way legally involved in this separate contractual relationship.

4. Obligations of the user; rights of use

4.1. The user is obliged to protect their password and account from access by third parties. The user is liable for any misuse of their account which they are responsible for.

4.2. The user may only use the career portal for the purposes provided for in these GCU. To this end, they are permitted to visualise individual data sets on their screen in the form of job advertisements using only the search masks provided by Mesago and to produce a printout for permanent visualisation. No further reproduction, distribution or utilisation of the information is permitted. In particular, the user is prohibited from passing the content on to third parties or using it for other personal purposes apart from information purposes, e.g. in the context of their own offer. Furthermore, the user may not process the content offered in any way, e.g. change, translate or remove copyright designations. All rights are reserved by Mesago or the respective author. Automated searches, e.g. using scripts, bots or crawlers, search software, by bypassing the search mask or similar measures (e.g. data mining, data extraction) are also prohibited.

4.3. The user undertakes to respect the rights of third parties, including the rights of Mesago. The user is therefore in particular not permitted to:
 a) use the information contained in the services (e.g. contact details) or the communicative services provided for advertising purposes;
 b) send or enter data which, in particular due to its type, nature, size or number, is capable of damaging or blocking Mesago’s IT infrastructure or the computers of other third parties or of spying on or damaging data contained therein (e.g. through viruses, Trojans, spam e-mails);
 c) carry out actions or distribute content in connection with the use of the career portal that violate the rights of third parties (e.g. copyrights, trademark rights, personal or data protection rights) or infringe applicable legal provisions, in particular the applicable criminal laws, youth protection provisions, data protection laws or antitrust regulations.

5. Blocking/deletion of content; exemption from liability by the user

5.1. Mesago is not liable for third-party content, but simply provides access to these entries (in particular job adverts) via the services available for use. The user is aware that entries which are labelled with a third-party company name or logo are made by that company and therefore not by Mesago.

5.2. If claims are asserted against Mesago by a third party, a court or an authority due to culpable behaviour on the part of the user, in particular as a result of a culpable breach of the obligations specified in Section 4, the user undertakes to exempt Mesago from any claims and to bear the costs of legal defence. Mesago is to inform the user immediately of the assertion of such claims. The user is to support Mesago to the best of their ability in defending against these claims. If the user does not fulfil this obligation within a reasonable period specified by Mesago, Mesago is entitled to resolve the third-party claim at its own proper discretion, taking the factual and legal situation into account as it appears to Mesago. The costs of this settlement are to be borne by the user, also in case the settlement subsequently turns out to be unfavourable due to information not provided by the user.

6. Liability of Mesago

6.1. Mesago is only liable for intent and gross negligence and for breach of an essential contractual obligation (cardinal obligation). Cardinal obligations are obligations that are essential for the fulfilment of the contract and which the contractual partner regularly relies on and may rely on. In case of a slightly negligent breach of a cardinal obligation, Mesago’s liability is limited to the damages typical for the contract and foreseeable at the time of conclusion of the contract. Mesago is not liable for slightly negligent breaches of secondary obligations that are not cardinal obligations. In cases of initial impossibility, Mesago is only liable if it was aware of the impediment to performance or if its ignorance was due to gross negligence, unless this concerns a cardinal obligation.

6.2. To the extent that Mesago’s liability is excluded or limited, this also applies to the personal liability of Mesago’s salaried employees, workers, staff, representatives and vicarious agents

6.3. The above exclusions of liability do not apply in case of fraudulent concealment of defects, acceptance of a guarantee of quality, or for physical injury (life, body, health).

6.4. In all other regards, the statutory provisions apply, in particular Sections 327d et seq. of the German Civil Code (BGB) on the contractual provision of digital products.

7. Term

7.1. This user contract is valid for an indefinite period. It can be cancelled by the user at any time without giving notice, and by Mesago with a notice period of two weeks. 

7.2. The right of both contracting parties to extraordinary termination without notice for good cause remains unaffected.

7.3 Furthermore, Mesago is authorised to temporarily exclude and block the user from using the portal in case of good cause (e.g. breach of the obligations under Section 4.3). Mesago is to inform the respective user of this immediately, stating the reasons.

7.4. In case of termination of the contract, the user account is deleted along with the associated personal data. Data subject to a statutory retention obligation forms an exception.

8. Applicable law, severability clause

8.1. The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies.

8.2. Should any provision of these GCU be invalid or not be part of the contract, this will not affect the validity of the remaining provisions.