FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How Ratio works, what it costs, and how it fits your hiring process.
Getting Started
5 questions
Ratio turns a job description, your notes, or a kickoff transcript into a structured, skills-based interview: the skills that matter for the role, one question per skill, a follow-up for when an answer runs thin, and a scoring rubric for what a good answer sounds like. Your team runs the interviews and scores the candidates. Ratio builds the structure; people make the hire.
1) Upload a job description, your notes, or even an AI meeting transcript. 2) Ratio drafts the interview kit, starting with the key weighted skills. 3) Create your interview stages and invite other interviewers. Ratio generates the questions and rubrics. 4) Your team runs the interviews and rates candidates. 5) Ratio rolls the ratings up into a candidate scorecard so the team can compare candidates on the same criteria.
One role. A job description is enough. Hiring manager notes or a kickoff call transcript make the model sharper, because the more specific source wins when they disagree. You review the skills, adjust the weights, and share the plan with whoever is interviewing.
We don't offer a self-serve free trial. If you want to see Ratio in action, book a demo and we'll walk you through a live working session using the job of your choice. If you want something hands-on without a subscription, the $499 Active Job + Consultation option gives you a complete structured interview plan and 90 days of access to run it in Ratio.
Most teams have an interview kit they are happy with in their first working session. Ratio drafts it in minutes; the rest of the time is you reviewing the skills, adjusting weights, and tweaking a question or two.
Pricing
4 questions
Starter is from $159 a month billed annually ($199 monthly). Growth is from $479 a month billed annually ($599 monthly). Scale is custom. Annual billing saves 20%. If you are not ready for a subscription, the Active Job + Consultation option is $499 one time and includes a live kickoff, a complete interview plan for one role, and 90 days of access to run it. Interviewer seats are unlimited and free on every plan.
Recruiter seats are for people who create and manage jobs, build interview plans, and own scorecards. Interviewer seats are for anyone who just needs to run interviews within those plans. Interviewer seats are unlimited and free on every plan.
No. We don't use per-candidate fees or credit systems. Your tailored package includes a set amount of hiring volume, so you know exactly what's included. If you consistently hire above it, we'll move you to a package that fits. No surprise per-unit charges.
Yes. Annual billing saves 20% compared with monthly.
Running Interviews
4 questions
No. Ratio drafts the skills, the questions, and the scoring anchors before the interview. Your interviewers ask the questions, listen, and score each answer on a four-point scale. Ratio adds up human ratings so candidates can be compared on the same criteria. It never judges a candidate's answer for you.
Yes. A panel interview in Ratio is one interview scored by several people. Each panelist scores on their own and cannot see anyone else's ratings until everyone has submitted. Then the lead interviewer opens the debrief, the panel sees every score side by side, talks through the gaps, and the lead records the final score. Original scores are kept. Independent scores first, discussion second, is what the research says protects the decision from the loudest voice in the room.
No. Candidates are interviewed by your people. Ratio builds the interview beforehand and adds up the ratings afterward. There is no chatbot screen, no AI-scored video, and nothing a candidate has to type into a bot.
Yes. Candidate scorecards can be shared using a live link that will update as you complete and score additional interviews.
The Method
13 questions
An interview kit includes the skills to test, one question per skill, follow-ups, and a scoring rubric, built for one role. Ratio builds it from your job description and hiring-manager notes: prioritized skills, questions and RATE rubrics for each round, and a candidate scorecard where human ratings land on the same criteria. (In the product it is called a Job Model.)
Yes, it is fully customizable. You can add or remove skills, adjust weights, tweak questions, and edit rubrics. The goal is to capture exactly how your team defines excellence for the specific role.
Yes. You build the kit once and use it for every candidate in that pipeline. You can also clone and reuse kits for future openings of similar roles.
Ratio is a co-pilot, not an autopilot. The system drafts the plan and rubrics, but your team runs the interview and makes the final decision. Human judgment remains critical; Ratio just ensures that judgment is based on clear, structured evidence. Ratio never scores a candidate's answer.
RATE runs in every round. The screening round keeps questions light and fast, is often recruiter-run, and uses four bare RATE anchors. Growth and Scale support later rounds with deeper questions like the ones a hiring manager asks. Those questions press harder on Trade-offs and Evidence, and Relevance adds one specificity floor so the interviewer knows what an empty answer sounds like.
Skills-based hiring evaluates a candidate's ability to do the work, not just their pedigree. It focuses on specific competencies rather than just past job titles or degrees. It puts the interview on the things the job actually needs.
It reduces noise. Everyone gets the same core questions, everyone is scored against the same written criteria, and interviewers score before they discuss. The research shows structured interviews produce among the smallest group differences of any top hiring method (Sackett et al., 2022). No method eliminates bias, and Ratio does not claim to. What structure gives you is a decision you can explain.
Unstructured interviews vary by candidate and rely on intuition, and the research shows they're poor predictors of job performance. Structured interviews use consistent questions and scoring. The most recent meta-analysis (Sackett et al., 2022) found they're more than twice as predictive of job success as unstructured interviews, and the strongest predictor among all major hiring methods.
STAR and SOAR are frameworks for behavioral questions. RATE covers behavioral, situational, and hard-skill questions with one rubric: Relevance, Approach, Trade-offs, Evidence. Teams already using STAR keep what works and gain a consistent way to score the questions STAR never covered.
Read the RATE framework →Nothing catches everything, and Ratio does not claim to. What RATE does is make polished answers work harder. The Trade-offs part of every rubric asks what the candidate gave up, what made it hard, or which option they rejected. Rehearsed and AI-written answers tend to stay balanced and keep every option open, which scores poorly on that line. Follow-ups then ask for the specific detail a real experience carries. Interviewers get a clear benchmark for telling lived experience from prepared performance, without turning the interview into a trivia contest.
Specialized roles require deep evaluation that generalist recruiters often struggle with. Ratio provides domain-specific questions and clear "look-fors" (rubrics), so recruiters can screen technical or niche candidates with confidence without being experts themselves.
Yes. The interview kit gives you the right questions to ask, and the scoring rubrics tell you exactly what to look for in a good answer. The Scorecard then lets you compare a candidate to the model and to other candidates, so your recommendation rests on the same criteria for everyone.
Ratio's founders spent a combined two decades in agency recruiting before building the product, and Ratio's I/O psychology efforts are led by Yuliya M. Cheban-Gore, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hofstra University who specializes in structured interviewing and personnel selection. She reviews and strengthens how Ratio turns job information into structured interviews and how the method is documented.
About Ratio →Structured Interviewing Best Practices
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Ask every candidate the same job-related questions, rate each answer against written criteria, take notes, and score before interviewers discuss candidates. Those are the components with the most leverage in the research review most teams cite (Campion, Palmer and Campion, 1997). Most teams adopt the questions and skip the scoring; the scoring is where the benefit lives.
How Ratio builds these in →Write the questions before anyone interviews, tie each one to a skill the role needs, and give every interviewer the same set in the same order. Ratio drafts that set from the job description, one question per skill with a scoring rubric, and puts the next question on the interviewer's screen so nobody drifts.
Each question appears with four RATE prompts phrased as "Did the candidate...", a four-star rating control and a notes field. Every question also ships with prepared follow-ups, one per RATE dimension, for when an answer runs thin. The interviewer decides when to use one.
Interview guidance in Ratio →On a four-point scale, against the same written rubric for every candidate: unable to answer, below, meets, exceeds. The guide asks whether the candidate gave specific detail, explained their approach, discussed the trade-off and showed the outcome. Ratio combines the human ratings; it never scores an answer itself.
The RATE framework →They reduce noise: everyone gets the same questions and is scored against the same criteria before the discussion. Structured interviews also produce among the smallest group differences of any top hiring method (Sackett et al., 2022). No method eliminates bias, and Ratio does not claim to.
Integrations and Security
1 question
ATS integration is included on Growth and Scale. Ratio integrates with 100+ ATS platforms, including Greenhouse, Lever, Bullhorn, Workday, and Ashby, through our integration partner Kombo, an integration layer built for HR tech.
Fit and Adoption
6 questions
Ratio was built for small teams first, where it provides structure without overhead. For enterprise teams, it ensures consistency across multiple hiring managers and high-volume pipelines.
Interview intelligence tools record and summarize live interviews (Gong, Metaview). Ratio is assessment-first: we help you build the structure before the interview, generating the questions and rubrics that drive the conversation. Recording tools tell you what was said. Ratio decides what to ask and what a good answer sounds like before anyone presses record. Many teams use both.
No. Ratio empowers them. It gives recruiters expert-level tools - clear models, good questions, and defensible scores - so they can screen better and with more confidence, even for roles they don’t know well.
The interviewer keeps the conversation. The warm open, the rapport, their read of the person all stay. What changes is small and specific: every candidate for the role gets the same skills-based questions, and every answer is scored against the same written cues. Most teams find that easier than what they were doing, because the questions and the scoring rubric arrive ready to use.
No. Ratio combines the ratings your interviewers give into each candidate's score. It does not grade the interviewer. Managers can use panels to compare how two people scored the same interview, which is a coaching conversation, not a report card.
All plans include email support. Growth and Scale customers get priority support with faster response times. Scale customers also get a dedicated Success Manager for onboarding and training.
Didn't find it? Email support@tryratiomodel.com and a real person will reply within one business day.
Still have questions? Bring a role.
Book a 30-minute working session. We'll build the interview plan for one of your open roles live, and answer everything along the way.