Recruiters, How do you vet resume in 2026? | Hacker News Reader

Recruiters, How do you vet resume in 2026?

15 pointsCoffeeSky10 comments

I have been so far reluctant to use tools like Antigravity.

Yesterday, I asked it to build a Minecraft clone. After about 20 minutes it gave me a basic voxel game with infinite world generation etc.

Obviously so many people made Minecraft clone long before LLMs so I would train dataset contained several implementation of it, hence it made me a working game in 20 minutes.

But it makes me wonder, everyone whose getting into the field probably used these tools to program projects and put it on their resume as well.

so how do y'all vet resume in 2026?

View on HN

Recruiters (internal and external) rarely actually look at any of your personal projects. The more experienced you are, the less relevant your personal projects are to a recruiter unless you've created some well known OS work. For less experienced engineers, the approach is relatively similar.

It's difficult to put much value in your personal projects without some form of social or commercial validation. Essentially, personal projects that aren't being used by anyone but you hold little to no value in terms of resume content.

First, get a kazoo, chalk, 5 live chickens, and a sharp knife.

Use the chalk to draw a numbered grid on the sidewalk; 10 should be fine.

Divide the resumes into 10 groups.

Cut the head off a chicken and see which number it wanders into. Repeat until you are down to one resume.

Done and far more efficient than all the current methods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Khvtqr-BxY

I should note, mostly we have screened, and then paid them to come work with us for 3 to 4 hours on a real piece of code.

I’d actually respect recruiters doing this more than just piping their inbox to /dev/null

As a programmer with 10+ years of experience, this question gave me a lot to think about.

I have to admit to myself that programming skills alone are no longer what makes me valuable.

If I switch my role to that of a boss or manager, what kind of people would I hire?

My answer: those who show the ability or potential to deliver good results even in the face of significant non-technical difficulties.

In Croatia we have a saying to the tune that it's better to be born without a di** than without luck, that's my tip to you.

None of these matters.. job market decides if you'll have a job. Layoff is happening everywhere, thanks to AI these days and it'll get worse. So it doesnt matter anymore.

Look at what people have built not the tools they list out. How mattter even less now in 2026

Honestly I think we're on our way back to good old networking. Realized that myself after trying to hire and receiving hundreds of automated applications in minutes, all seemingly tailored with a cover letter.

The recruiters I know haven't changed their methods that much. They understand AI and some of the implications but at the end of the day it's the end client who has a job spec and they still follow whatever is in that spec.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com