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Comment by addaon | Hacker News Reader

"Resumes are a poor proxy for talent."

Resumes are not intended to be a proxy for (assessing) talent. They're intended to be a proxy for (assessing) experience. Portfolios, references, and interviews are intended to be a proxy for assessing talent.

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IMO, resumes, while ideally intended as experience summaries, often function as gatekeeper proxies, filtering candidates based on arbitrary criteria rather than actual potential. Unfortunately, I too can't think of a good alternative solution that can scale well.

Hiring on potential isn’t a great strategy though. It’s important to compare candidates on something objectively displayed during in the hiring process, rather than some “potential” that’s a figment of one’s imagination.

It's not exactly potential. The way I've heard it phrased is: hire for slope, not y-intercept. The trouble is that slope is even harder to judge than y-intercept.

IMO, Resumes attempt to solve a problem that precedes what some consider the actual hiring process: the need to quickly screen thousands of candidates.

Unfortunately, this approach has flaws. The person doing the initial screening may not have a deep understanding of the role and is often working with secondary information. This can sometimes lead to them becoming gatekeepers, filtering based on superficial criteria (like career gaps, job switches, etc)

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