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Understanding Matching Rules 

Matching Rules are what power the match scores you see in Suggested Matches and on the Score Breakdown panel. They're also what mentors and mentees see when they use Search & Connect to look for matches on their own - the same rules and weights drive the match percentages shown there too. Each rule compares an answer from a mentor's profile against an answer from a mentee's profile, and the rules together make up the overall match score for a pair.

Where to find it

  1. Go to Admin Tools
  2. Click Matching Rules

This opens the Build Matching Rules page.

Mentor → Mentee vs. Mentee → Mentor

Rules are set up separately for each direction of the match:

  • Mentor → Mentee — rules used when scoring mentors against a mentee
  • Mentee → Mentor — rules used when scoring mentees against a mentor

Use the tabs at the top of the Build Matching Rules page to switch between the two. You can have a different set of rules and weights for each direction.

What's in the rules table

For each rule, you'll see:

  • ID: a unique identifier for the rule
  • Rule Name: a short label for the rule (for example, Time Zone, Cohort)
  • Match Type: which direction the rule applies to (Mentor → Mentee or Mentee → Mentor)
  • Rule Weight: how much this rule counts toward the overall match score, shown as a percentage
  • Modified By:who last edited the rule, and when
  • Actions: Edit or Delete the rule

You can also Search the rules list if you have a lot of rules to look through. 

Recommended workflow

RQ recommends setting up rules in two steps:

  1. Create your rules first, without worrying about weights. Add each comparison you want the system to make.
  2. Once all your rules are in place, distribute the weights. Use Distribute Weight to split the total evenly across all rules, then fine-tune individual weights afterward — either directly in the rules table or from the distribution panel.

For more detail on each step, see:

Other tools on this page

  • Rules and Weights — a consolidated view of all your rules and their weights.
  • Audit — a log of changes made to your matching rules over time.

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