The paperwork question, asked first.
A Dushanbe developer taking an Almaty role is an ordinary week here. Whether they may is a fact about paperwork, not about the person — so Aria scores it as part of the six, instead of leaving it to surface at offer stage.
- Five countries, answered one at a time
- Declared by the candidate, never inferred
- Scored, never used to filter anyone out
Declared, not inferred
Five statuses, and the candidate sets them
Citizen, permanent resident, holds a work permit or visa, would need sponsorship, or other. Asked separately for each of the five countries in this market — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan.
Nothing is guessed from a passport, a surname, or the city on a CV.
The three that mean “can start without paperwork” are
listed in config.WORK_AUTH_CLEARED, and everything else
is a different answer rather than a worse one.
- “Not sure” is a real option, and it is treated as unanswered — not as no
- A candidate can change any of the five at any time
Scored, not filtered
Sponsorship and a permit are not the same answer
Across a border, the location factor pays out seven different ways. An existing permit in the city they want scores 1.00; the same permit with no interest in moving scores 0.45; sponsorship scores 0.35 when it is the city they asked for and 0.25 otherwise.
Location is 16% of the total, so none of this decides anything on its own. And it is worth being exact: a sponsorship answer lowers a score, it does not remove a person. Everyone stays in the queue, with the sentence that put them there attached.
Order matters
The border is checked before the city
An earlier version of the scorer compared cities first. Two candidates in Dushanbe, both wanting the same Almaty role — one already holding a Kazakh permit, one who would need sponsoring — came out identical, because both had asked for Almaty.
Wanting to work somewhere does not make the paperwork go away. The check now runs the other way round, and the two answers separate: 1.00 against 0.35. Both candidates are still in the queue.
Ask it at the top. Not at the offer.
Right to work is one of six weighted factors, and the reason for it is written next to every position in the queue.