The Gauntlet of Fatigue

The screen bleaches her vision. Sarah, the hiring manager, clicks ‘Open Next.’ It’s 2:44 PM, and she’s trying to chew through the last 104 submissions before she can finally justify getting a mediocre coffee from the machine down the hall. Her shoulders are knotted tight, the physical manifestation of trying to measure human potential using an artifact designed for the filing cabinet.

She glances at the summary-a block of self-congratulatory jargon-and the dates. If the dates look choppy, the person is ‘unstable.’ If the dates look too stable, the person is ‘unambitious.’ It’s a guaranteed loss, either way.

The Paradox of Polish

Ninety-five percent of the time, the application goes straight into the virtual abyss. Not because the candidate couldn’t do the job, but because their life narrative didn’t fit the arbitrary, linear template we still pretend is the standard of professional excellence. We criticize the tools of measurement, yet we spend entire weekends polishing those documents until they shine with meticulously crafted, semi-fictional achievements, all for the benefit of a machine that measures only keyword density and a human who measures only fatigue.

This is the core contradiction of modern professional life: we know the resume is a terrible, prejudiced, and fundamentally broken predictor of success, yet we insist on using it. We insist that future capacity must be judged by past packaging.

Inertia, mostly. And the terror of truly having to *look* at someone’s potential. We are obsessed with surface-level identity. We want to know who you *were*-the titles you held, the logos you stood near-rather than focusing on who you *are* and what you need to become.

The Carnival Ride Inspector

Think about Astrid S. Astrid is, among other things, a Certified Carnival Ride Inspector. Her job requires ruthless attention to detail, crisis management in front of impatient crowds, deep understanding of kinetic physics, legal compliance, and the ability to sign off on something that could, if she misses one tiny bolt, result in tragedy. She understands risk management, logistics, and accountability on a scale that most Project Managers can’t fathom.

But if Astrid applies for a role as a Director of Operations at a major software firm, her resume is immediately thrown out. Why? Because the ATS doesn’t recognize the transferability of checking the G-forces on the Cyclone to managing server load capacity. Sarah’s 24 seconds are spent looking for ‘SaaS’ and ‘Agile,’ not ‘Structural Integrity.’

Focusing on Potential, Not Packaging

We need to stop hiring the past and start supporting the future. If we want true transformation-in our careers, our companies, or our lives-we have to look beyond the immediate, surface-level identity and focus on the fundamental desire for change and the potential for growth. Just like a good health program focuses not on the identity of being a smoker, but on the profound capacity to become a non-smoker, organizations like SMKD understand that the starting point doesn’t define the destination. Potential is everything; packaging is nothing.

Teaching the Dark Arts

I’ll admit my own hypocrisy here. I spend a significant portion of my professional time advising clients on how to make their resumes ‘robot-proof.’ I teach them the dark arts of keyword stuffing, the strategic placement of phantom achievements, and the necessity of crafting a three-sentence summary so vapid yet compliant that it slides right past the initial filters. This feels necessary, like untangling Christmas lights in July-a tedious, frustrating task that yields no immediate joy but is required to prevent chaos later on. I criticize the game, yet I teach others how to win it, because right now, that is the only entry point into the conversation.

“The resume is optimized for exaggeration. It’s a retrospective document, meaning the expertise it supposedly measures is already outdated the moment the document is saved.”

That experience changed how I view ‘expertise’ on paper. Expertise, in the modern context, isn’t about the degrees you acquired a decade ago; it’s about the ability to learn and adapt right now. The resume measures neither. It’s a historical accounting ledger, not a predictive algorithm.

The Illusion of Objectivity

We perpetuate the system because it feels safe. It gives Sarah the hiring manager a mechanism to defend her snap decisions when challenged by her boss: ‘Well, they didn’t have the 44 keywords we searched for.’ It creates an illusion of objective measurement where, in reality, there is only a mechanism for confirming pre-existing biases.

We have created a vast, hidden graveyard of talent. It is filled with people like Astrid, who might be the most conscientious, risk-aware, problem-solving leader you’ll ever meet, but who couldn’t get past the machine because ‘Carnival Ride Inspector’ wasn’t on the list of accepted professional jargon.

The Final Question of Value

The tragedy is the redundancy. We require the resume to get the interview, and then we spend the entire interview trying to figure out if the claims on the resume are actually true. Why not just measure the skills directly? Why not start with the actual work? Why measure the packaging when the product is standing right in front of you?