Private invites are invitations that come from Bugcrowd or program owners directly. Both private invites and public bounties have potential for opportunity and maintaining activity in either area is the goal. All in all, they’re a great way to earn some serious rewards, upskill, and become an active participant in the hacker community. But how do you go about getting these private invites?

At Bugcrowd, we value our high-activity researchers, meaning that the more active you are on our platform, the more private invites you’ll receive. So the way to secure private invites is simple: stay active on the platform by hunting, making submissions, and getting paid. 

 Let’s talk about CrowdMatch

Let’s start with how the system works, how to get started, and what you can do to increase the number of invites sent directly to you. 

First, let’s take a look at how the system works. CrowdMatch enables real-time automatic curation of crowds based on our rich knowledge bank. The system finds the best possible match for any customer based on the following criteria:

  • Specific customer needs, environments, and use cases
  • Researcher skill sets, interests, and availability (on top of hundreds of other dimensions).

Read about best practices to get the most out of CrowdMatch here.

Do submissions help? What about getting paid?

Yes! The best and easiest way to get invites is to submit more valid reports. Each time you submit a valid report, it provides CrowdMatch with more information about your skill set, increasing your eligibility for more private invites in the future. Getting paid is another means to getting more private invites. The more money you get paid for hunting on programs, the more likely you’ll see new invitations to programs. (Read more about how important your skills are here.)

With our CrowdMatch technology, the platform combines the diverseness of submissions, account details, and preferences in a formula to select the right researcher for the right program. 

How does staying active result in more invites?

Instead of a shallow or narrow approach, CrowdMatch engages in real-time auto-curation of the right talent based on our rich knowledge graph to find the best possible match between specific customer needs, the target environment, and use cases on the one hand and researcher skill sets, interests, and availability on the other. The platform is always working to find available hackers to hunt on programs. Therefore, the more active you are, the more likely it will see you as a good match for a customer’s needs.

For example, let’s say you recently submitted several valid reports on a web app target. The Bugcrowd Platform will know that you are skilled in web app targets and that you were recently active. When another program with similar web app targets needs new researchers, you would get short listed! Our system can see what your skills and strengths are. It leverages this data to invite you to participate in the programs where these skills would be most critical. 

Researchers who are consistently active on programs are more likely to be matched and invited to more programs. In short, stay active, stay connected, and show impact to maximize the number of invites in your inbox.

 What if I’m new or took a break from hunting?

Whether you’re a new researcher or someone who took a bit of a break from hunting, the strategy for getting private invites remains the same: start hunting and making submissions, and the Bugcrowd Platform will take notice of you! As soon as you become active and make submissions, the system will see your skills and tag them accordingly. 

For those who may have taken a break, you can simply restart by making submissions on your old programs to show that you’re active again, and you’ll start receiving private invites. 

For those of you who may be new to the hunt and aren’t sure where to start, check out the Programs page and get hacking. This page provides our current program offerings and includes information on the reward ranges, scopes, and target types for specific engagements. Remember, if you are active and make submissions, our system will automatically tag your skills and send you relevant private invites!

Stay informed

Remember to follow us on Twitter, join our Discord, and read the blog posts on our site to hear about future private invite opportunities!