I built a hiring platform where candidates never apply - here's how the matching works

The problem I was trying to solve Candidates send hundreds of applications. Companies receive thousands of resumes. Most candidates never hear back. Both sides exhausted. Most of the effort wasted. The insight that changed my thinking: senior engineers don't apply to jobs. They get headhunted. A recruiter finds them, reaches out, and they evaluate the opportunity on their terms. Why is that only available to senior people? It shouldn't be. What I built Wrkmark Jobs — a hiring platform where candidates never apply. Here's how it works: Candidates create one profile Algorithm scores them against active roles Companies see their top 15 ranked matches Companies reach out. Candidates choose to respond. No applications. No cover letters. No ghosting. How the matching algorithm works This is the part I want to talk about technically. The algorithm scores each candidate against each job across four dimensions: Skills — 40% of score Simple exact match (case-insensitive) with a synonym map for common variations: const SKILL_SYNONYMS : Record < string , string [] > = { ' ruby on rails ' : [ ' rails ' , ' ror ' , ' ruby-on-rails ' ], ' kubernetes ' : [ ' k8s ' , ' kube ' ], ' postgresql ' : [ ' postgres ' , ' pg ' , ' psql ' ], ' javascript ' : [ ' js ' , ' es6 ' , ' ecmascript ' ], // 60+ mappings } A candidate with "RoR" on their profile matches a job requiring "Ruby on Rails". Simple but surprisingly effective at this scale. Salary — 25% of score All salaries converted to USD for comparison using live exchange rates (Frankfurter API). The logic: job_max_usd >= candidate_min_usd → score 100 job_max_usd < candidate_min_usd → score 0 If a company offers $80-120K and a candidate expects $30-50K — that's a great match. The company can easily meet the candidate's expectation. Score: 100. The common mistake is calculating range overlap. Overlap fails in the overqualified-offer case. Experience — 20% of score Years of experience vs role requirement. Meeting or exceeding → full score