How sograph works
Matching runs on skills alone. A member's name reaches an employer only when the member says yes.
For members
Add your skills
On Your skills, type up to five at a time or paste a resume, and give each a level.
Get found by skill
Employers see an anonymous figure, never your name. Requests arrive on Intro requests.
Accept or decline
You have 14 days. Accepting shares your name and email with that one employer, for that one demand.
- pending
Each skill you type maps to ESCO, the European Commission's public vocabulary of about 14,000 skills, so “Postgres”, “PostgreSQL” and “psql” land on the same skill and employers find you however they phrase the need. You enter your name once, the first time you save skills; it is stored apart from them.
For employers
Post a demand
A title and the skills it needs. For each: a weight, a minimum level, and whether it is mandatory.
Read the matches
Members who hold every mandatory skill at its minimum level, ranked by coverage.
Request an intro
The member has 14 days. If they accept, their name and email replace the figure on that demand.
- Member SMSPanonymous, rank 1
- Intro pendingMember HNMXanonymous, rank 2
Coverage is the weight of the demand's skills a member holds, divided by the total weight; a skill held below its minimum level earns nothing. The figure and four-letter code come from an internal id, nothing about the person, and stay the same across demands so you can recognise someone. A match shows pending, accepted or declined once you ask. Skill names must be ESCO labels; the form says when a term is not recognised.
With Pro, two more panels: gaps, demand skills fewer than three members hold (a demand with many gaps matches few people however it is weighted), and nearby skills, members who do not match directly but hold a skill ESCO marks as related to one you asked for, with a similarity score.
What stays private
Employers see
- An anonymous figure and code
- A coverage score
- Skills and levels, under the five-holder rule
- Your name and email, only after you accept
Employers never see
- Your name or email before you accept
- Your resume text: it is discarded after reading
- Your exact skill list
- Whether you declined or let a request expire
The five-holder rule
A skill is visible only when at least five members hold it. Below that, those members show the broader parent skill instead, and the rule repeats one level up. If no level reaches five, the skill is hidden for everyone, so a single holder of a rare skill cannot be singled out by a one-skill demand. The view rebuilds every ten minutes, so a newly saved skill can take up to ten minutes to count.
Pools
Everyone starts in the open pool, Everyone. A pool is an invite-only group, such as an alumni network, a guild or a client's vendor list. Matching, the five-holder rule, gaps and nearby skills all run inside one pool, so its employers see only its members. Each pool has a graph of the skills its members hold against what is asked for.
Pro employers create pools and invite links on Pools. Anyone can join with a link for their role and leave again, except Everyone. A creator sees how many members and employers a pool has, never who. Accounts are by invite too: opening an invite without an account offers to create one, starting in that pool.
Reference
Skill levels
| 1 | Aware. You have used it a little or studied it. |
| 2 | Assisted. You can do routine work with guidance. |
| 3 | Independent. You do real work with it unsupervised. |
| 4 | Leading. You design with it and guide others. |
| 5 | Authority. Others come to you for the hard cases. |
Last used helps employers judge recency. It is optional and shown only as a month and year.
Plans
| Free | Pro, USD 49 per employer a month | |
|---|---|---|
| Members | Always free | Not needed |
| Demands and ranked matches | Yes | Yes |
| Intro requests | 3 in any 30-day window, declined and expired count | No cap |
| Gaps and nearby skills | No | Yes |
| Create pools | No | Yes |
Change or cancel any time from Billing; access runs to the end of the paid period.
What is stored and who sees it
| Data | Who can see it |
|---|---|
| Your skills, level, last used | You. Employers see the anonymised view only. |
| Your name and email | You, and an employer whose intro you accepted, for that demand. |
| Resume text | Nobody. It is parsed and discarded. |
| Unrecognised terms | Reviewers, to improve the vocabulary. Not linked to you. |
| Demands and their skills | The employer who created them. |
| Intro requests | The employer who sent one and the member who received it. |
Full detail, including the providers that process data, is in the Privacy policy. You can delete your account on Account.
Questions
What happens to a pasted resume?
The server pulls out up to 200 skill terms and discards the text. Emails, phone numbers, links and sentences that read like job history are filtered out before anything is saved.
A skill I typed is not on my profile. Why?
A term that does not map to a known skill is held for review and stays off your profile until a reviewer maps it. The save message says how many terms are waiting.
Does the employer know if I declined?
No. Declining and letting a request expire look the same to the employer, and neither reveals anything about you.
Why does a skill I just added not count yet?
The anonymised view rebuilds every ten minutes, and a skill shows only once five members in the pool hold it.