Abstract: The disclosed embodiments provide a system for processing data. During operation, the system identifies a set of providers that meet a set of requirements in a request for proposal (RFP) from a consumer based on an overall compatibility between the set of requirements and the set of providers. Next, the system generates a ranking of the set of providers based on the compatibility and a network distance between the consumer and the set of providers in a social network. The system then selects one or more providers from the ranking as matches for the RFP. Finally, the system transmits the RFP to the one or more providers.

Abstract: A system and method includes obtaining, from a database, member characteristics of a member of an online social networking system, obtaining, from the database, job characteristics of a job posted to the online social networking system, and determining, characteristic scores including, for each member characteristic, a characteristic score based on a relationship between the member characteristic and an associated one of the job characteristics. A processor combines the characteristic scores to obtain an aggregate job score, combines a subset of the characteristic scores to obtain a category score, obtains, from the database, aggregate job scores and category scores associated with the job from other members of the online social networking system, and determines an aggregate rank of the aggregate job score in relation to the aggregate job scores and a category rank of the category score in relation to the category scores.