Amelie Marais is a full-time matchmaker for dating app Once, where she spends her days handpicking potential dates for users based on their interests and preferences.
Relationships on Female First
I'm one of nearly 50 matchmakers at the London office of Once, a new dating app that has just launched in the UK. The matchmaking team consists mostly of females but there are 11 men too. Some do it part time, some like me full time. Our backgrounds vary - there are psychologists, engineers and even a GP! I trained as a teacher and I am hoping one day to go back to University to gain a Masters Degree.
I've always been really interested in what makes people tick and how the initial spark between two compatible people can ignite into a full-blown, loving long-term relationship. Working as a matchmaker seemed like a natural progression for me and I jumped at the chance to do so.
After three days of training in Once's offices, where we worked closely with a senior matchmaker in order to learn what really makes people compatible. All matchmakers keep in touch with each other through an internal messaging system so we can ask each other questions and share tips.
How a good 'match' between two people can be described and articulated is the key to what we do. Users provide us with a certain amount of information about themselves to help Once's intelligent algorithms begin the process of decide who would be a suitable match, looking for areas of common ground such as Facebook Likes and Friends, location, education level, occupation, and so on.
This process narrows down the potential number of matches, but what sets Once apart from other matchmaking apps is the human element - people like me using our gut feeling to make a really good match.
There are so many visual clues in the profile pictures that users provide. For example, do they have a tattoo? Are they wearing jewellery? Are they smiling, or do they look serious? The way people present themselves tells you a lot about them. When you know what you are looking for, it becomes easier to make the right match.
Once users are given one potential match per day, so I take my time to really think about who to match with who, visualising how the first meeting between the two people I choose will go, what they'll say to each other, which topics they will really find common ground over.
Whether a user accepts or rejects a match helps the system to learn - if one user shows a tendency to accept matches with guys who have blonde hair and glasses, she'll be served with more matches with guys who have blonde hair and glasses in the future.
It's amazing to think how significant my decision could be for the future our users. Might they go on to get married, have kids, spend the rest of their lives happily together?
I've been known to play matchmaker among my friends in the past but since I've been doing it on a regular basis with Once, I find that I can't go anywhere without looking for potential matches - on the bus, even when I'm just walking along the street!