How Knock works

Where the jobs come from, how each posting is read, how you're matched, and how tailored materials stay true.

The four tiers

From the gap between what a posting requires and what you have.

Strong fitNo experience minimum, or new graduates explicitly welcome.
FitsYou meet the stated minimum.
StretchUp to a year short, or a degree that “equivalent experience” can replace. Shown unless you turn stretches off.
ReachMore than a year short, or a required degree or license you don't hold. Hidden unless you ask for everything.

Straight from each company's own hiring system.

Company job boards: Knock reads the public job boards companies run on Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, Oracle and iCIMS, and USAJOBS for federal jobs, every few hours. That's where a posting lives, so what you see is what the company is showing right now.
Closed means gone: A posting that leaves its company's board is marked closed and drops off your list. Workday and Oracle are read through the same data their own pages load, which shows a closed job as closed (the public page can keep looking open).
Fresh dates: The posted date comes from the company's system, and Knock also records when it first saw each posting, so reposts don't pass for new.
Links you paste: Any posting can be added by its link. LinkedIn and Indeed don't allow other sites to read them, so paste the company's own link (one click on Apply usually gets you there) or the description.

Once per posting, then shared by everyone it might fit.

What's pulled out: Minimum years of experience, minimum degree, licenses you must already hold (a CPA, Series 7), clearance, citizenship, visa sponsorship, pay, workplace and the required and preferred skills.
Required, not preferred: Only what a posting requires counts against you. “Master's preferred” on a Bachelor's minimum is a note, not a gap; years listed only as preferred count as none.
The text, not the title: A “New Grad” title can still require a Master's, and a “Senior” title can ask for no minimum. The body text decides.
Who reads it: Anthropic's Claude Haiku reads each posting. Until it has, rules read it roughly and the posting says so.

Your titles and keywords, your level, your places, then the gap.

Titles: Postings whose title contains one of your titles match exactly; with related titles on, similar titles and others in the same families match too, ranked a little lower.
Keywords: Keywords from your experience find postings whose descriptions use them, even under titles you didn't pick. You can edit them on your Profile.
Level and place: A posting's level comes from the experience it asks for. Jobs a level from the ones you picked show under Other levels instead of disappearing. Where it is (or that it's remote) and how recently it went up are checked against your search.
Your experience: Worked out from the dates on your resume. Internships and research count fully toward a 0–1 year minimum and a quarter as much toward longer ones. A degree in progress counts only where a posting welcomes students.
Hard stops: An active clearance you don't hold, US citizenship you don't have, or no sponsorship when you need it. Those postings are left out.

Tailoring rewords and reorders; it never adds.

Built from your words: Claude Sonnet tailors your resume, cover letter and a recruiter note to one posting, citing the line of your profile each resume bullet came from.
Checked before you see it: A bullet with a number that isn't in the line it came from is replaced by your original. Skills you never listed are dropped. Numbers in the letter that appear nowhere in your profile or the posting are flagged.
Gaps are questions: Skills a posting asks for that your profile doesn't show are listed as questions. Say how you've used one and it joins your profile for next time.
You send it: Knock never applies or contacts anyone for you.