- 70% of U.S. employers now use skills-based hiring, prioritizing practical abilities over degrees and credentials.
- Companies like Expensify, Automattic, and Gumroad have stopped requiring resumes for engineering roles.
- Startups are mining GitHub and open-source contributions to find candidates based on actual work, not polished applications.
- LinkedIn launched skill verification tools that use AI to confirm proficiency based on real platform usage.
- Paid work trials of up to six weeks are replacing traditional interviews at a growing number of firms.
Every Resume Reads the Same Now
The resume is dead. Not because recruiters stopped caring about qualifications — but because ChatGPT made every application look identical.
Hiring managers across the tech industry report the same problem: inboxes flooded with AI-polished resumes that hit every keyword, mirror every job description, and say absolutely nothing. Michelle Volberg, CEO of recruiting software firm Twill, compares the situation to “a restaurant where the menu looked really beautiful and had all these amazing ingredients and dishes, but there was no one there actually making the food.”
The numbers confirm the shift. A new survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 70% of employers now use skills-based hiring — prioritizing what candidates can do over where they went to school or how long they sat in a previous role. The resume might still exist as an administrative artifact, a way to track a name through a pipeline. But as a decision-making tool, it’s finished.
Companies Are Ripping Up the Application Process
Expensify’s engineering job posts now open with a blunt disclaimer: “Resume not your thing? That’s great, we don’t really read them anyway.” Applicants answer five specific questions instead. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and Tumblr, states plainly on its software engineer listings: “We don’t require a resume, and we don’t expect one.”
Gumroad, the e-commerce platform, asks prospective engineers to send an email explaining why they want the job and what they’ve built — then puts selected candidates through a paid four-to-six-week work trial. No credential screening. No keyword matching. Just proof of ability.
The trend extends beyond startups. Volberg says she’s seen the shift accelerate in the past three months alone. Some of the companies she works with now extend paid trials lasting a full month. Others have deprioritized Big Tech pedigree and Ivy League degrees entirely. The question is no longer “where have you worked?” It’s “what can you build?”
GitHub Is the New Resume
Bolun Li, 27, learned this lesson the hard way. While building his first fintech startup at Duke University, he hired engineers with flawless resumes who “couldn’t build anything.” The disconnect between credentials and competence pushed him to found Vamo, a startup that searches GitHub to match software developers with companies based on completed projects — not listed skills.
One of Vamo’s first hires was Alex Vasquez, 23, a University of Massachusetts Lowell graduate who spent months applying to jobs through traditional portals and getting nowhere. Li found him through a side project on GitHub. “I definitely didn’t stand a chance, even if I was very capable,” Vasquez said of his experience with automated applicant tracking systems. Li never saw his resume.
The model reflects a broader reality: in a market where AI can fabricate credentials in seconds, actual shipped work is the only signal that still means something.
LinkedIn and Indeed Are Scrambling to Adapt
LinkedIn announced a new feature allowing job seekers to verify skills on their profiles. The platform partnered with AI tools like Descript, Lovable, and Replit to confirm proficiency based on real usage data. “There is a shift happening from surface-level signals like titles or keywords to this deeper evidence of capability,” said Pat Whelan, a product manager at LinkedIn.
Indeed, meanwhile, has been running a six-month beta program for entry-level retail and hospitality roles that lets candidates interview immediately upon applying if a recruiter is online. The model compresses the gap between application and human contact — a direct response to what the company calls “the black hole problem,” where candidates wait weeks without hearing back.
The Bias Problem Hasn’t Gone Away
Skills-based hiring sounds meritocratic. It isn’t guaranteed to be. Not every strong candidate publishes code on GitHub, posts thought leadership on LinkedIn, or has the bandwidth for a month-long paid trial while job hunting. Workers balancing caregiving, school, or financial pressure may be excluded by systems that reward visibility over competence.
“We’ve seen innocent-looking or innocuous proxies that actually turn out to be very biased, and you only know that because somebody checked,” said Hilke Schellmann, author of “The Algorithm,” which examines how AI shapes hiring, promotion, and termination decisions. New methods might reduce one set of biases while quietly introducing others.
The resume is gone. What replaces it will determine who gets hired for the next decade — and who gets left behind.
