How the rubric works

Every posting is judged against a rubric derived from your questionnaire — not a keyword match, not a black box. The rubric is deterministic: the same questionnaire always produces the same rubric text, and you can read that text verbatim on your Profile page.

What the rubric encodes

• Seniority floor — “roles a full rung below score at most 4.”
• Location as ranking, never filtering — a stated location preference ranks results; it is explicitly forbidden from hiding them.
• Compensation floor — stated-lower postings are marked; silence is unknown, not failure.
• Dealbreakers — excluded title keywords reject regardless of employer.
• Engagement types — salaried (W2) roles, contract/project work, or both. A contract gig is scored on its own terms (with your hourly-rate floor, if set), never penalized for not being salaried — and vice versa. Postings that don’t match the engagements you asked for score at most 2, with the reason stated.
• Conditional rules — e.g. a different seniority floor for a specific location.

Scores come with reasoning

Every score is accompanied by a written rationale (“Meets your seniority floor; platform scope matches; flag: hybrid 2 days”). A bare number you can’t interrogate is worthless — the rationale is the product. Click any score in the app to read it, see the scorer’s verdicts on seniority, location and pay, and jump to the setting that would change it.

The same panel says what the posting is buying — a leader’s seat, a doer’s, or an analyst’s — read from the responsibilities rather than the title. A Director title on a description that is all coordinating and processing is a doer posting, and the panel says so. This reading never moves the score; it tells tailoring which of your accomplishments to lead with for that posting.

Ratings tune the rubric

When you dismiss a posting you give a reason code and a free-text note. The note matters more than the code: “this is IC work dressed up as a VP title” teaches the rubric something “wrong_level” alone cannot. Resolved ratings are folded into rubric rebuilds and never re-flagged.

Versioning

Saving the questionnaire bumps the rubric version. Scores reference the version that produced them, so a rubric change never silently rewrites history.