How does proficiency influence match scores in TA?

Hi ​@beth.steffens, 

1) In Talent Acquisition (TA) today, skill proficiency levels do not influence match scores.Put differently: adjusting proficiency values on skills (or not adjusting them) won’t negatively impact TA matching results, because proficiency is not factored into the TA match-score algorithm.

In TA, the proficiency setting only controls whether the proficiency slider appears next to skills on the Position Calibration page, and it does not affect matching/scoring.

What proficiencies are currently “for” (in this context)

Even though proficiency isn’t used for TA match scoring, it can still be useful for:

• Side-by-side role leveling comparisons (e.g., associate vs. senior versions of a role that share many skills but differ by expected proficiency).
• Talent Management (TM) tie-ins, where proficiency levels are connected to skill assessments and can help drive upskilling and development.

2) Most likely: you’re in the wrong calibration context or the tenant/user doesn’t have the required Talent Design/JIE proficiency setup + edit permissions.

A quick diagnostic list:

1. Position vs. Role calibration
   • Proficiencies are primarily a Role Design / JIE / Talent Design concept: roles are defined as skills with each skill graded on a proficiency scale.
   • For some workflows, proficiency is not available in position-based calibration. There’s an old support note confirming skill proficiencies were not available for position-based succession planning; only role-based with JIE.
   • Standard TA recruiter calibration materials usually discuss Skills/Keywords as Preferred/Required/Exclude, not proficiency sliders.
2. Feature/config not enabled
   • The relevant configs are typically around:
     • Admin Console > Job Intelligence Engine > Proficiencies Config for scale/labels
     • Admin Console > Job Intelligence Engine > JIE Config > Advanced > component_config > skill_proficiencies
     • Skills Design / Skills Engine settings if the customer is using Skills Design rather than legacy taxonomy
   • If those aren’t enabled or are misaligned, the proficiency slider/section may not show or may not work.
3. Permissions
   • View-only users may be able to see Role Design but not add/edit roles or skills. The TD personas distinguish Talent Design Viewer from Role Design Manager/Admin; Viewer has no add/edit capability, while Role Design Manager/Admin can edit roles.
   • A 2026 PR explicitly made the Add Skills button hidden and edit pencil disabled for users with view-only permissions on the role calibration page.
4. Skills taxonomy / Skills Design setup missing
   • Older JIE setups may require a skills taxonomy/proficiency configuration for the proficiency experience to work; one ticket notes the customer needed a skills taxonomy file ingested for skill proficiencies.
   • Newer Skills Design setups can replace legacy skills_taxonomy_config, but still require the relevant Skills Design / Skills Engine configuration to be enabled.
5. Ingestion-owned / read-only fields
   • If role fields are owned by ingestion or marked view-only, some calibration actions can be blocked. Copy Calibration, for example, was disabled when any copied field was view-only because the product copies the full calibration rather than selected fields.
6. You can see/set proficiencies, but they don’t affect matches
   • Separate issue: the UI may expose proficiency sliders, but backend scoring may ignore them unless the scoring config is enabled. Amdocs had this exact mismatch: display_skill_with_prof exposed the UI, but proficiency didn’t impact matches because the old gate was archived and the new scoring config wasn’t enabled for positions.

Bottom line: if a user can’t see or set proficiencies, I’d first verify:
(a) are they calibrating a Role/JIE role vs. a TA position, (b) do they have Role Design Manager/Admin permissions, and (c) are skill_proficiencies / Proficiencies Config / Skills Design configs enabled for that tenant.