What is SignalMatch?
SignalMatch is a GDPR-proof CV anonymisation tool, built by SPAIK Labs for recruiters and small staffing agencies who prepare dozens of CVs for clients every day. The tool automatically strips all personal data — names, contact details, addresses, Dutch personal ID numbers (BSN), IBANs, URLs — from a PDF CV and returns the CV in the agency's house style: own logo, primary colour, font and template.
Work that takes eight minutes per CV by hand happens in under 30 seconds. A glanceable PII manifest shows what was removed, so the recruiter can send the output PDF straight to their client — without re-reading, without rework. SignalMatch runs on Supabase with a PDF-parsing pipeline and LLM extraction for PII detection. GDPR compliance is the starting point of the architecture, not a marketing badge — the output speaks for itself. Live since 2025 at signal-match.nl.
The real problem: anonymisation gets skipped
Even large staffing agencies know they have to anonymise CVs before sending them to a client. The GDPR, and specifically the guidance from the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, AP), is crystal clear: don't send identifiable candidate data to parties for whom no processing agreement is in place. And yet, in practice, we see it rarely done well.
A solo recruiter in Amsterdam toggling between LinkedIn, Outlook and their ATS doesn't have time to open a PDF in Word, strip out every name and contact detail, then layer a house-style template on top and save it as a new PDF. That's eight minutes per CV. With fifteen shortlists a week, that's two hours nobody actually books — so the name stays on, and the CV goes to the client with the BSN and all.
We see the same dynamic at the SMEs we guide from SPAIK: you don't need an IT department to get started with AI, but you do need tools that fit the existing workflow. A tool that behaves like a wall you have to climb over never wins against a Word document.
What we built
We compressed the full eight-minute workflow into its most minimal form. Three screens, no wizard, no onboarding tooltips. SignalMatch is built around three routes: /upload (the CV in), /cvs (a list of processed CVs) and /settings/house-style (logo, colour, font, template).
Every other task a product manager somewhere might find "nice" to add — a dashboard, a team feed, a history view with little stats, a Slack integration — isn't on the roadmap. Not because it can't be done. Because it dilutes the single-purpose promise. SignalMatch does one thing well.
Privacy by design, not as a badge
We see a lot of SaaS tools paste "GDPR-compliant" as a hero label above their homepage. We do the opposite. Our CV anonymiser describes in plain language what happens to PII — not in legal clauses, but in the verbs that actually live in the code. Strip, don't mask. Process in memory, don't log. Return the output PDF, delete the original input after 24 hours.
Behind the scenes, SignalMatch runs on Supabase (Postgres + Edge Functions + Storage), with a PDF-parsing pipeline and LLM extraction for the PII detection. Candidate data lives within Europe, managed from the SPAIK office at Erasmusgracht in Amsterdam. We work with the standard processor agreement prescribed by the Dutch DPA, and the entire codebase is written in TypeScript and React, so audits and hand-overs don't trip over exotic choices.
How SignalMatch compares to existing tools
We get this question often: how does SignalMatch differ from Spadework, the existing alternative some staffing agencies already know? The short answer: Spadework is built for enterprise legal teams that need to prove compliance to an audit committee. SignalMatch · CV tool for recruiters is built for the recruiter who, at half past five in the afternoon, still has three candidates to pitch.
Concretely: Spadework offers batch uploads, audit logs and role-based access. We offer an upload zone, a PDF manifest and a house-style screen. We can't prove to a board meeting that every user action has been logged. What we do guarantee is that the recruiter holds a working, on-brand CV in their hands within 30 seconds — ready to go straight to the client.
Why this is a SPAIK Labs product
SignalMatch was born from a question we kept hearing from clients like Movir and OCP: "Can you also solve this small, annoying work problem for us?" At SPAIK Labs we build that kind of product — not as a consultancy deliverable, but as a standalone SaaS product that can keep growing on its own. For the full product write-up on our site, see SignalMatch in SPAIK Labs.
Other Labs products follow the same pattern: narrowly scoped, opinionated, built within four weeks to a first live version. That pace is only possible because the stack is already in place — Supabase, React, TypeScript — and the team has worked together for years: Thijs Bongertman, Jochem van Laren and Jan Bolle. We wrote earlier about the step from AI pilot to production; SignalMatch is exactly that journey, condensed into one product.
Who it's for
Solo recruiters and 1–10-person staffing agencies, plus in-house recruitment teams of 50–500 employees. Tech-comfortable but without time for onboarding. Working on a laptop with three tabs open. They don't want to remember how a tool works — they want the tool to forget itself the moment they use it.
Try SignalMatch at signal-match.nl. For questions about the architecture, integrations or how we build Labs products: email thijs@spaik.io.
This article was written according to the SPAIK editorial policy. Author: Thijs Bongertman, Co-Founder & CTO at SPAIK.
