How Spectacled grades a candidate, and tells you why.
Every candidate on a job gets a letter from A to D, a verdict in plain words, one sentence on why, and a checklist of the job's must-have and required skills. The grade is calculated by code from the profile and the job, so the same pair always gets the same answer.
Updated
What do the four grades mean?
Each letter comes with the next step, so a recruiter knows who to call first without reading a number.
| Grade | What the card says | Score |
|---|---|---|
| A | Strong fit: contact first | 90–100 |
| B | Good fit: worth a call | 75–89 |
| C | Partial fit: check the gaps first | 60–74 |
| D | Not a fit for this role | Under 60 |
| No letter | Can't grade: the profile lists too little, or the job lists no skills | Shown in grey |
Where does the one-sentence reason come from?
The grader checks the same questions in the same order and writes the first one that applies, so the sentence names what is most likely to change your decision.
The examples are the app's own sentence patterns, filled in for the Senior Backend Engineer role.
- Is there anything to grade?"This job lists no skills to grade against."
- Does the profile list enough?"Profile lists only 2 skills, so Go and Kafka couldn't be checked. Confirm on a call."
- Are the must-haves there?"Missing must-have skill: Kafka. Has Go and Postgres."
- Are the years close to what the role asks?"3 years of experience; this role asks for 6+."
- Is it the same kind of job?"Works as a Data Analyst, a different job from Senior Backend Engineer."
- Can they reach the office?"Lives in Monterrey; this role is hybrid in Austin."
- Are the required skills there?"Has every must-have; missing Terraform."
- Otherwise, what do they have?"Has all 3 must-haves and 9 years (role asks 6+)."
Why is a strong profile sometimes held at B?
A few rules set the highest grade a candidate can reach, however strong the rest of the profile is. When one applies, the card says which.
| What the grader finds | Highest grade | The card says |
|---|---|---|
| More than half the must-haves missing or only partly covered | D | Held at D: must-haves are missing |
| At least one must-have missing | B | Held at B: a must-have is missing |
| Under half the years the role asks for, when it asks for 3 or more | D | Held at D: under half the years asked |
| A hybrid or on-site role, and the candidate lives far from the office | B | Held at B: lives far from the office |
- When several rules apply, the lowest one wins.
- A cap compresses the score into the band instead of flattening it, so two candidates held at B keep their order.
- Unknown years are left out, never read as zero, so a profile without dates isn't held back for it.
- When Find best matches ranks a job, a hard dealbreaker, such as a candidate who needs remote work for an on-site role, holds the score at 30.
Is the grade the same as the seven-dimension score?
They follow the same grade rules at two depths. The grade on candidate cards is quick enough to show everywhere; Find best matches looks wider when you rank a whole job.
The grade on every card
The pipeline board, the applications inbox, the job's pipeline and the client portal
Must-have and required skills, years and seniority, and where the candidate can work.
Find best matches
Ranks your pipeline or your whole database against one job
Seven dimensions, each 0 to 100, with the same caps. See how María's 94 adds up.
What does the grade never count?
Only job-related evidence moves a grade. Anything that tracks a person's circumstances rather than their skills is left out on purpose.
- Culture fit or personality. It isn't asked for or scored, by the grader or by the AI read of a match.
- Protected traits, or anything that stands in for them, such as a name, a country or a school.
- Gaps, short stints and job changes. More experience than asked becomes a note for the recruiter, not a penalty.
- A smaller title than before, not working right now, or working through a consulting firm.
- Languages the job doesn't ask for. A job can set a level for each language it needs: Conversational, Professional, or Native or bilingual.
- A guess about language skill. Only what the candidate states counts, never how they write or where they're from.
What if a grade looks wrong?
Tell us from the match card. In the Chrome extension, "Grade wrong?" sits under the reason: pick the grade it should be, add what it missed, and send.
- Each correction is saved with the version of the grader that made the call, so it can be checked against that exact version.
- Not sure? "Can't tell" is an answer too.
