Version 3.12.0

3.12.0 is about two things. The first is the free trial: new accounts now start the free trial period the moment you sign up, and we tell you upfront what you get, when you are charged and how to avoid being charged before anyone asks for a card. The second is the match score. The product is built around it, and too many people were never asked the questions that make one possible. This release asks them, explains why, and fixes several things that were quietly holding scores down for everyone else.

Starting your trial

• Your 4 free weeks start with a card, before you use the product. With a new account, you now start your free trial before reaching the dashboard. Until you do, every page of the app except Settings takes you to a page that explains the trial and lets you start it. Before, an account that skipped the card could open the product and then find features refusing it one at a time. Accounts that already have access are not affected.
• You see the terms before you are asked for a card. The sign-up form now lists what you get: 4 weeks free with every feature switched on, a card to start the trial but no charge today, and the price that applies after 4 weeks unless you cancel. The next page repeats those terms, with the free weeks as its headline, before sending you to the payment page. Previously the payment page opened a second or two after you signed up, with none of this explained. Cancel any time before the trial ends and you pay nothing.
• Knowing our customers is why we ask for a card. Asking for a card up front is part of our commitment to you: it keeps the platform safe, it means we know who is using it, and it builds a community every member can trust.
• Monthly or annual, in your own currency. Signing up only offered the trial on the monthly plan, and its price was shown in US dollars to everyone. You can now choose monthly ($8.99 a month) or annual ($89.90 a year, a 17% saving), and prices are shown in pounds, euros, Swiss francs or rupees when that is your currency. In European countries outside the euro zone, such as Norway and Poland, you can choose to pay in euros or US dollars.
• Settings → Billing explains the trial too. The billing page never mentioned the trial, and offered "Subscribe Monthly" beside a price, which read like an immediate charge. If you can start a free trial, it now says so, says you are not charged today and when you will be, and its buttons read "Start 4-week free trial". If you cannot have a trial, for example because you have had one recently, you see the normal subscribe options, so you are never offered a trial you cannot start.
• Starting a trial is not emailed as a payment. You get the email saying your trial has started, and no longer also a payment receipt for $0.00 or a welcome written as though you had paid. The welcome email has also been reworded for the single JobIntel plan.

Setting up

• Three questions, once, before you start. New accounts now answer their career field, their skills, and where they want to work before reaching the dashboard. These are not preferences: without them your feed is empty and there is nothing to measure a match score against. The fastest route is still your résumé: upload it and we read your skills out of it and suggest your career field from them, so there is little to type. If your résumé is not to hand, you can answer each question yourself, and nothing is skipped either way.
• Each answer saves as you give it. Leave partway through to find your résumé and you come back to the question you were on, not to the beginning.
• You can see your résumé being read. Reading a résumé usually takes 15 to 20 seconds, and all you used to see was a faded button label. Setup now shows a progress bar and a running count of seconds, then names the file and how many skills it found. A file we could not find any skills in is shown as a problem to fix, not as a success.
• Your résumé's skills are ready to add in one click. On the skills step they arrive already ticked: untick anything that is not yours and add the rest. The step tells you how many skills were found and how many can go on your profile, and lists any it could not match to a skill we track, because those will not count toward your match scores. If you skipped the upload on the first question, you can upload your résumé on this step instead.
• Billing stays reachable while you set up. Setup covers the dashboard, which meant someone who wanted to sort out their subscription first could not get to it. Settings now stays open, and a "Go to billing" link at the bottom of setup takes you there. Setup picks up where you left off when you come back.
• Your search is actually set up. Answering the location question creates the nightly search that fills your feed. Previously it was possible to finish setting up and still have nothing scheduled to run.

Getting started checklist

• Uploading your résumé during setup ticks "Upload your resume" straight away. The checklist did not notice your upload until you reloaded the page. It now updates as setup closes.
• Opening your job feed completes "Explore your job feed". The step used to need at least three jobs in your feed, so browsing a new feed with fewer left it unfinished. Your first visit to the feed now completes it, even when the feed is empty. If the step was already ticked for you, it stays ticked.
• The progress count matches the steps on the card. The card listed five steps but counted four, so choosing your email updates never moved the count.

Your skills

• Skill search puts the skill you typed first. Results were sorted alphabetically, so typing "aw" listed seven foreign-language words for "lawyer" ahead of AWS, and it looked as if the skill was missing. Results are now ordered by how closely they match what you typed: an exact match, then skills that start with it, then the rest. Skills from your own career field are grouped first, so a term that means different things in different fields shows your field's meaning at the top.
• Common alternative names find the skill. Searching for "Amazon Web Services" found nothing, because the alternative names for a handful of skills had never reached the skill library. It now finds AWS, and "GA4" finds Google Analytics.
• Résumé skills written differently still match. Job listings were matched to our skill library by alternative names as well as exact names, but résumés only by exact name, so a résumé that said "DevOps" or "Budget & Forecasting" lost those skills. Résumés now use the same alternative names as job listings, and those two match "CI/CD / DevOps" and "Budgeting & Forecasting".

Your match scores

• Scores stop being dragged down by fragments. Three-letter skill names were being matched inside longer words: "ECT" found inside architecture, "RAG" inside storage, "TRA" inside orchestration. Nearly a fifth of the skills jobs asked for were tokens like these, which nobody has and nothing could match, so every score they touched was lower than it should have been. Skills now have to appear as whole words. Worse, a fragment could replace the real skill it was hiding inside: a job asking for a named tool recorded the three letters buried in that name and lost the tool itself. The longest genuine match now wins.
• A score no longer drifts for a job that has not changed. When a listing arrived with only a few details and was filled in later, its score kept using the thin version. The same job could score differently from an identical copy of itself. Scores are now recalculated against the description you can actually read.
• Changing your skills refreshes the estimates across your feed. Each job's early match estimate was worked out once, against the skills you had on the day the job arrived. After you changed your skills, older and newer jobs in the same feed were ranked against different versions of your profile. The estimates are now refreshed whenever your skills change.
• Readiness scores include skill match and credibility again. For many jobs, the readiness score was worked out before the skill match and credibility results had been saved, so it left both out. It now uses the saved results.
• Jobs that stop at an early estimate still get a readiness score. Without one they sorted behind every other job in a feed ordered by readiness, however good the estimate was.
• Skills that were never recognised now are. Some accounts held skills that had never been matched to the shared skill library, so the scoring had nothing to work with and returned 0% on every job. Those skills have been repaired.
• No score at all beats a made-up zero. An older account with no skills on file was given a 0% match on every job, which reads as "we checked and you scored nothing" when nothing had been checked. Those jobs now show no score and the reason instead. New accounts always have skills, because setup asks for them.
• Scores you already have are recalculated separately. Everything in this section changes how scoring works from now on. Listings scored before the release keep the number they were given until they are rescored, which happens over the following days.

Your career field

• It says what it does. Choosing a career field decides which jobs appear in your feed and what your match scores are measured against. It was described as something that "helps us prioritize". Both the setup question and the setting now say plainly what it controls, and point you at Settings → Profile rather than just "Settings".
• Switching tells you what happens. The confirmation now says your feed will change, how many jobs are scored under another field, and that nothing is deleted. Scores already given stay as they are.
• And your old jobs are reachable. A note above your job feed offers View previous field jobs, showing everything scored under a field you no longer use, with the scores they were given. Switch back and they return to your normal feed.

Your feed

• A feed that paused while you were away says so. Nightly searches stop when you stop signing in, rather than filling your feed with months of listings you will never read. When you come back, a note at the top of your feed says how long it has been and offers to run your search now, or to change what it looks for first if your situation has moved on.
• Work type is applied to the search, not just the display. Stating that you want on-site work now shapes which jobs are fetched.
• The hidden remote jobs notice names the setting that is hiding them. With an on-site work type, remote-only jobs are left out whatever the "Include remote" setting says, but the notice still told you to turn that setting on, which changed nothing. It now says your on-site work type is the reason, and Auto Search says so beside the toggle. If you have since changed the setting, the notice says that rather than asking you to change it again.
• A job you just added appears at the top. A new job has no score for several minutes while it is being scored, and the feed sorted it behind every scored job, often many pages down. Jobs added in the last hour that are still waiting for a score now stay at the top of feeds sorted by score.
• Your feed says when your résumé's skills are not counted yet. If your résumé found skills you have not added to your profile, a notice above your feed says how many, explains that your match scores do not include them, and links to where you can add them. It only counts skills you are actually able to add.
• A search you started says when it is waiting. A search that has not begun yet now shows that it is queued and that you can keep using the app, instead of an empty space. An interrupted search now restarts within about a minute rather than after up to half an hour.
• Auto Search says when it cannot load your settings. When your saved search could not be read, the page showed an empty search with no queries and no location filters, which looked as if your settings had been deleted. It now says it could not load them and that nothing has been lost, with a link to billing when your plan is the reason.

Signing in

• Signing in as a different account leaves nothing behind. It was possible for a second account signed in on the same browser to see traces of the first, including the wrong name and menu items meant for another kind of account.
• A single failed check no longer signs you out. A brief failure on one background request could log you out mid-session, because the path that quietly renews your session had stopped being reachable at all. Both halves are fixed.
• One slow request no longer takes down the page. A failure in one peripheral feature could put the whole app behind a maintenance screen.
• An email address we cannot deliver to is told so. If mail to your address has been returned as undeliverable or reported as spam, asking for another verification email said "try again shortly", and then refused you for trying again. It now explains that resending will not help, and that you can change your email address in Settings or contact support. The resend button is removed in that case.

Other fixes

• Applied Date and Next Follow-Up save again. On an application, picking either date and pressing Save Changes sent nothing and showed no error, and the date was gone when you reloaded. Both dates now save.
• For coaches, Skip setup closes straight away and stays closed. It used to wait on the server before closing, and could reopen after you had skipped it.
• A count of one reads "1 skill" and "1 job". Several screens, including setup, Skills and Trends, said "1 skills" or "1 jobs".

Under the hood

Four retired blog links now redirect instead of showing a missing page, and your subscription and payment records stay in step even when sign-up events arrive out of order.