1. A method of identifying a candidate with a selected qualification and deriving a referral path from a searcher to the candidate, the method comprising: retrieving a biography from networked storage, reducing the biography to a distilled expression comprising reference terms, qualification-related terms, and meaningful context, classifying the biography by comparing the distilled expression to a reference set of expressions distilled from human-scored reference biographies, assigning a qualification category and a qualification score to the biography responsive to a match of the distilled expression to a subset of the reference set, storing a dataset comprising the qualification category, the qualification score, and an identifier of the biography in an archive, enabling a searcher to select a qualification and search the archive for a candidate with the qualification, extracting published connections between the searcher, the candidate, and any mutually connected intermediary from the networked storage, detecting possible unpublished connections as overlaps in the biographies of the searcher, the candidate, and the intermediary, deriving a referral path from the searcher to the candidate from the published or the possible unpublished connections, and calculating a connectivity score for the referral path reflecting likelihood and ease of an introduction of the searcher to the candidate through the intermediary.
1. A method of identifying a candidate with a selected qualification and deriving a referral path from a searcher to the candidate, the method comprising: retrieving a biography from networked storage, reducing the biography to a distilled expression comprising reference terms, qualification-related terms, and meaningful context, classifying the biography by comparing the distilled expression to a reference set of expressions distilled from human-scored reference biographies, assigning a qualification category and a qualification score to the biography responsive to a match of the distilled expression to a subset of the reference set, storing a dataset comprising the qualification category, the qualification score, and an identifier of the biography in an archive, enabling a searcher to select a qualification and search the archive for a candidate with the qualification, extracting published connections between the searcher, the candidate, and any mutually connected intermediary from the networked storage, detecting possible unpublished connections as overlaps in the biographies of the searcher, the candidate, and the intermediary, deriving a referral path from the searcher to the candidate from the published or the possible unpublished connections, and calculating a connectivity score for the referral path reflecting likelihood and ease of an introduction of the searcher to the candidate through the intermediary. 14. The method of claim 1 , where the qualification score is normalized to be substantially independent of the qualification category.