Frequently Asked Questions

Skills-based hiring evaluates a candidate’s ability to do the work, not just their pedigree. It replaces traditional job descriptions and unstructured interviews with a clear set of skills and evidence from the interview, with a particular emphasis on core competencies. The result is a fairer, faster way to spot qualified people for specialized roles, and a process your team can explain and defend. Many employers have already shifted to this approach because it improves quality of hire, wastes less time, improves the candidate experience, and reduces bias.

Skills-first hiring improves three things at once: accuracy, speed, and fairness. Accuracy comes from defining the specific skills that matter for the role and rating candidates against them. Speed comes from reusing a job model and interview plan rather than starting from scratch each time. Fairness comes from consistent questions and scoring rubrics so every candidate is evaluated the same way. Whether you are a recruiter working alone or part of a larger team, consistency is vital. It also gives hiring managers clearer trade-offs and better conversations about who advances.

Unstructured interviews vary from person to person and invite gut calls. Structured interviews use a shared plan, targeted questions, and scoring rubrics tied to the job. They create comparable evidence across candidates and are more predictive of job success. Ratio builds a structured interview framework for every role so your team can run the same playbook and compare results confidently.

Bias slips in when interviews are inconsistent, questions change midstream, or feedback is vague. It is also very common for less experienced recruiters to ask leading questions. Answers can sometimes pass through a lens that is unconsciously tainted by pressure to hit metrics or other bias. A standardized plan and objective rubrics reduce that risk. With Ratio, every candidate gets the same core questions and the same scoring scale, and notes roll into a transparent scorecard. That combination helps teams focus on evidence, not hunches.

Gut calls feel fast, but they’re hard to defend and even harder to repeat. A structured process sets expectations ahead of time and captures comparable evidence. It also makes it easier to explain why you said yes—or no.

Three practices move the needle: ask everyone the same core questions, score against shared rubrics, and discuss evidence—not vibes—in debriefs. Ratio bakes those practices into the product so your team follows them every time.

The Ratio model is the system, or methodology, behind our product. It turns your job description and hiring manager notes into three outputs: a Job Model (skills and weights), an Interview Plan (questions and rubrics), and a Candidate Scorecard with a final Match Score. Together, they give you repeatable screening for specialized roles and a record you can audit later. Ratio believes in focusing on foundational skills, especially core competencies, and leveraging a more tailored and intelligent assessment framework. Our assessments are backed by decades of recruitment experience and detailed research, tailored for each job, and streamlined to support recruiters during screenings.

In Ratio, the Job Model (often called a hiring model) lists the skills that matter for the role and how much each one counts. It reflects both priority and required proficiency, so a must-have, advanced skill weighs more than a nice-to-have. The Job Model anchors everything that follows: interview questions, rubrics, scorecards, and the final Match Score.

The Interview Plan is a ready-to-run script: targeted questions for each skill plus clear rubrics for scoring. Rubrics spell out what good, better, and excellent answers sound like so interviewers can rate consistently, even outside their domain. This makes interviews faster to run and easier to compare.

Different questions surface different evidence. Ratio blends behavioral questions (past examples), situational questions (what would you do), and applied skills and knowledge (our ASK framework). That mix produces a balanced view of judgement, experience, and hands-on ability.

The Match Score is a single, defensible view of candidate-to-role fit. It’s calculated from the skill-level ratings and the weights in the Job Model, so higher-value skills move the score more. Use it to shortlist faster, trigger deeper interviews, and explain decisions to stakeholders. Think of it as an objective alignment score, not a replacement for your judgement. Ratio's Match Score is driven behind-the-scenes by our proprietary algorithm and factors in the weight of each skill in the Job Model.

The Candidate Scorecard shows how a person performed on each skill and why. It combines interviewer notes, rubric-based ratings, and the weighting from the Job Model. You can scan it to see strengths, risks, and trade-offs, then compare candidates side by side.

Upload a job description and any notes. Ratio drafts a Job Model with the key skills and weights, then generates an Interview Plan with questions and rubrics. Run your screen, rate responses against the rubrics, and Ratio produces a Candidate Scorecard and a Match Score. You keep the model for future openings and refine it as you learn.

Drafting the first Job Model takes minutes; refining it is where teams add context. Most customers create a solid first version in their initial working session and reuse it for similar roles. Because plans and rubrics are generated for you, getting to a confident first screen is quick.

Ratio is a co-pilot, not an autopilot. The system prepares models, plans, and rubrics; your team runs the interview and makes the call. Human judgement stays in the loop, backed by structured evidence.

Yes. You can add or remove skills, adjust weights, tweak questions, and edit rubrics. The point is to capture how your team defines excellence for this role, then save that model for next time.

Yes. Keep a library of Job Models and interview plans by role or level. Clone, tweak, and share them with hiring managers to move faster the next time you open the role.

Specialized roles fail when the screening is shallow. Ratio pushes the conversation into real work: applied scenarios, trade-off questions, and clear look-fors. You get stronger signal early, so fewer interviews and fewer surprises later.

Yes. The Interview Plan gives you domain-correct questions and rubrics, and the Scorecard guides how to weigh the answers. You don’t have to be the subject-matter expert to run a fair, rigorous screen.

Mis-hires usually come from fuzzy requirements and uneven interviews. By locking in the Job Model up front and using the same plan for everyone, you reduce noise and surface gaps early. The Scorecard makes risks explicit so you can decide with eyes open.

For engineering and other technical roles, Ratio focuses on applied problem-solving, system thinking, and trade-offs. Questions map to the Job Model and avoid trivia. Use the model again for adjacent roles and tune the weights by level.

If the role is new to you, lean on the Job Model and Interview Plan. They outline what to ask and how to rate answers. Use the first few screens to calibrate with your hiring manager, then save what worked as the standard for next time.

Conversational AI runs chat-style interviews. Ratio builds a structured plan tied to a Job Model and produces a scorecard and Match Score you can audit. If you need depth on specialized skills and a repeatable process for your team, Ratio is the better fit.

Interview intelligence tools record and summarize live interviews. Ratio is assessment-first: it generates the plan, rubrics, and scoring model up front, then aggregates results into scorecards and a Match Score. That makes comparisons faster and decisions clearer.

Ratio was built for small, busy teams. It gives you a reusable model and plan so you spend your time with the right candidates instead of rebuilding your process every search.

Start with one role. Upload the job description, review the Job Model, and tune the weights. Share the Interview Plan with your hiring manager, then run your first screen and review the Scorecard together. Repeat for the next role using what you learned.

Most teams need a short walkthrough to get comfortable with the plan and rubrics. After that, interviewers follow the script, score against the look-fors, and compare scorecards in a debrief.

No. Ratio doesn’t replace recruiters or hiring managers. It gives them better tools—clear models, good questions, and defensible scores—so they can do their best work.

Ratio shines on specialized, high-skill roles where signal is scarce and stakes are high. It can support other roles too, but the biggest gains come when deep skills really matter.

Yes. Keep separate Job Models for each opening, reuse components across similar roles, and track candidates with scorecards that roll up cleanly. That way you can run multiple searches without losing structure.