How the Lemon Score works

Try it — no sign-up

Build a Lemon Score.

You're the hirer. Dial in what a candidate has on record — and how many separate employers logged each thing. Two agencies flagging the same trait is where it turns sour, fast.

Incident on recordEmployers loggedPoints

🍑 Ripening — earn the score back down

Positive signalCountOffset

The maths, in the open: each incident scores base × m(n), where n is the number of independent employers who logged it and the corroboration multiplier is m(n) = 0.25n² + 0.75n — one report counts ×1, two ×2.5, three ×4.5. Points sum, ripening offsets subtract. The reference band is 0–1000, but a peachy candidate can run negative (a 5-star hire) and a thoroughly rotten one can blow past 1000 — both are deliberate, for illustration.

Lemon Man with a clipboard, filing a record

01 — Points go up

Every lemon trait has a price.

Uploads aren't free text and they aren't vibes. Each one maps to a fixed incident type with a fixed point value — heavier for the things that actually torch a client contract.

Incident type	Why it stings	Lemon points
Chronically late	Per logged instance	+45
Q4 medical-leave clearing	Suspicious seasonal pattern	+90
Last-minute bail (<24h)	Promised the shift, vanished	+130
Insubordination + disciplinary action	Formal write-up on file	+150
Suspected malingering MC	Documented MC pattern	+160
No-show (full shift)	Client backfill scramble	+200
Contract abandonment	Walked mid-engagement	+260
Credential falsification	Lied on the way in	+380
Data-secrecy breach (with finding)	Carried your data out the door	+420
Theft (with police report)	The full sour	+500

A starter set — the full 50-incident simulator covers the whole catalogue, grouped by category. A comprehensive, evidence-backed upload (3 tokens) lands the heaviest weighting.

02 — The corroboration multiplier

One employer is a complaint. Two is a pattern.

When a second — or third — employer logs the same trait on the same person, the points don't just add. They multiply, on a quadratic curve. A repeated lemon gets sour fast.

A corroborated lemon is a real lemon. Independent agencies seeing the same behaviour is the strongest signal the platform has — so the score treats it that way.

No-show · base +200

1 employer reports200

2 employers report~500

3 employers report~900

Illustrative. Pucker-up territory after three.

03 — Points come back down

A lemon can ripen into a peach.

The score isn't a life sentence. Stay clean and it decays on its own. Put in real effort and it drops faster.

🍑 6–12 clean months, no new uploads — the score steps down a band.
📜 2 verified good testimonials from recent employers — points off.
🎓 2 WSQ training courses — willingness to upskill signals a real turnaround.
✍️ A quality write-in — engaging with the platform is itself a positive signal.
🤝 Certified charity volunteering — verified hours with an IPC-registered charity, a costly signal that's hard to fake.
🎗️ A tax-deductible donation to an IPC-registered charity — real money behind the turnaround.

How workers un-lemon →

0 / 1000

Peach — cleared

Clean months14 running

Good testimonials3 verified

WSQ courses2 done

Same person, 18 months later. Score 720 → 180. That's the platform working.

A sour lemon ripening into a sweet peach

Sour to peach — the whole point of a score that decays.

04 — Every upload is contestable

Nothing goes live in the dark.

Frivolous uploads would poison the well. So every record runs a contest window before it counts — and the employer pays to file it, which keeps the trigger-happy ones honest.

Employer files the upload

A structured incident report, evidence attached, against a paid token. Money on the line means no idle grudges. The record is queued, not yet visible.

The worker is pinged — within 24 hours

An OTP-verified alert goes to the worker. They have the contest window to accept it, or push back with their side of the story.

Uncontested? It goes live in 24–72 hours

No response, no dispute — the record publishes and the points land on the Lemon Score.

Contested? It goes to mediation

The worker can reach the ex-employer to resolve it. A quality, corroborated rebuttal mitigates the score. A flimsy one doesn't.

Run the Lemon Score against your own roster.

Pilot operators get a walkthrough of the engine, the incident catalogue and the contest flow.

Request pilot access → Read The Squeeze