The Red Herring of Red Flags: Why Resumes Are a Relic of the Past

&gt; They’re often polished, curated, and tailored to tick boxes rather than showcase genuine skills.<p>I look at a lot of resumes and would say most aren&#x27;t well polished or curated. They often don&#x27;t showcase skills either, but it is surprising how bad resumes still are today.

&quot;Resumes are a poor proxy for talent.&quot;<p>Resumes are not intended to be a proxy for (assessing) talent. They&#x27;re intended to be a proxy for (assessing) experience. Portfolios, references, and interviews are intended to be a proxy for assessing talent.

In my mind resumes are the trust part of &quot;trust but verify&quot;. The resume is evidence the candidate meets the needs of the role description. The job interview verifies the resume is not a work of fiction.

For me I understood resumes when I interviewed.<p>It’s a pipeline. People are filtering the resume and you show up late in the process to interview. The resume is giving you material. You study it before the interview and based on what’s on it you look for opportunities to casually measure the candidate in a manner most favorable to the candidate himself. If the candidate can’t answer questions which probe the things his resume claims as expertise then it doesn’t bode well.

The root of the problem is that hiring doesn&#x27;t scale. If you try to scale, it falls apart. It doesn&#x27;t matter if you use resumes or some &quot;objective&quot; coding interview. Hiring is getting to know a lot of people and finding those that align greatly with what you are doing and who is doing it. You can&#x27;t know that quickly. It sucks but it&#x27;s the reality.

They&#x27;re simple, easy to make, easy to read, and perfectly solve the problem of quickly communicating your background to someone in in less than a minute.<p>I have a hard time imagining an alternative.