Resumes Are Broken. What Comes Next?

Let me share something I've been thinking about for a while.

The resume and cover letter system we all use? It's not a capability assessment. It's a filtering mechanism. And those are very different things.

A capability assessment would tell you whether someone can actually do the job. A filtering mechanism just narrows the pile to a manageable size. The two occasionally overlap, but not as often as we'd like to believe.

This distinction matters because it explains something that anyone who's job searched knows intuitively: there's a wide gap between people who succeed in this system and people who could actually succeed in jobs.

The Politician Problem

Here's an analogy that might resonate.

Becoming a politician is one job. Being a politician is another job entirely. The skills that win elections - fundraising, messaging, performing on camera, managing media narratives - have surprisingly little overlap with the skills that make for good governance.

We see this play out constantly. Charismatic candidates who can't govern. Thoughtful policy experts who can't connect with voters. The system rewards one set of qualities while the job requires another.

Now think about job searching.

The resume/cover letter game rewards a specific set of qualities: clean narratives, keyword optimization, gap-free timelines, prestigious credentials, the ability to translate experience into bullet points that mirror job requirements. It rewards people who look good on paper.

But "looks good on paper" and "would be great at the job" are not the same thing. Sometimes they overlap. Often they don't.

The system rewards people who are good at getting jobs. That's not the same as being good at jobs.

The Narrow Lane

Here's what makes this system particularly brutal: it only rewards a very narrow band of qualities.

The filtering isn't even about whether you can do the job. It's about efficiency and risk aversion. It's easier to filter for clean narratives than to assess actual capability. It's less risky to hire someone with a predictable background than someone unconventional.

I understand this from a business perspective. Hiring is expensive. Bad hires are costly. When you're reviewing hundreds of applications, you need heuristics. You need filters.

But understanding why the system works this way doesn't make it any less broken. And it doesn't make it suck any less for the people getting ground up in its gears.

The Ugly Duckling Effect

Here's what I want to say to anyone who's been through this: you're not broken. The system is.

When you've been job searching for months, when you've been rejected dozens or hundreds of times, when you've been filtered out for reasons that feel arbitrary or unfair - it does something to you.

You start to feel like an outcast. Like there's something wrong with you. Like everyone else has figured something out that you haven't.

I've felt this. I've spent 25 years building small, one-person businesses. When I tried to apply for corporate jobs, I was filtered out immediately. Too risky. Can't be managed. Will leave at the first opportunity. Might try to steal their business.

None of that was true. But it didn't matter. The filters couldn't see me as anything other than a liability.

If you're reading this and you feel like you're on the outside looking in - like you've been exiled to your own little planet - I want you to know: lots of people are out here with you. Parents returning after years at home. Career changers who don't fit neat categories. Founders who want to go back to employment. People from non-traditional backgrounds. People who are unconventional, outside-the-box, don't fit the narrow lane.

How AI Is Making It Worse

Here's where this connects to our broader conversation about AI.

When companies use AI solely for automation - to make the filtering more efficient, to process more applications faster, to screen candidates with less human involvement - they're doubling down on a broken paradigm.

The filtering was already aggressive. AI makes it more aggressive. The filtering was already missing good candidates. AI misses them faster.

We're heading toward (if we're not already at) a point where AI writes job applications and AI screens job applications. Two systems talking to each other. Possibly the same AI, talking to itself.

What exactly have we accomplished? We've cut humans out of a process that's fundamentally about humans.

This is AI used poorly. Not unethically in the sense of being deceptive - just... pointless. Optimizing a broken system instead of building something better.

What If We Built Something Better?

Here's where I start thinking out loud. I don't have all the answers. But I've been mulling this for a while.

When the car was invented, it wasn't just a faster horse. It enabled entirely new things - suburbs, road trips, supply chains, ways of living that didn't exist before.

When the internet was invented, it wasn't just more efficient retail. It created social media, remote work, the creator economy, entire industries that didn't exist before.

What if AI could do that for hiring?

Not just "automate the filtering more efficiently." Not just "help candidates game the existing system better." But actually build a new paradigm. One that captures people as whole humans, not just bullet points on paper.

The Presentation Layer We Need

Think about what a resume actually is: a chronological inventory of what you've done, with some bullet points about skills. It's a document format that's been largely unchanged for decades.

What does it capture? Titles, dates, company names, keywords.

What doesn't it capture? How you actually think. How you make decisions. How you handle ambiguity. How you work with others. What you're genuinely capable of learning. What kind of environment you thrive in. Who you are as a person.

You know - the things that actually matter for whether you'd be good at a job and happy doing it.

For some fields, we have better approaches. Creative professionals have portfolios. Developers have GitHub repos. Writers have clips. These show actual work, not just claims about work.

But most people don't have a natural portfolio format. How do you show your actual thinking if you're an operations manager? A sales rep? An analyst? A customer service lead?

Not a polished performance. Something more like a genuine window into how you work.

The Referral Model

Here's another angle on this.

The best way to get a job has always been through referral. Someone vouches for you. Someone who knows the company and knows you says "this person is worth talking to."

Why does that work so well? Because it includes a reputation layer. It's not just your self-reported credentials - it's someone else's endorsement. And that endorsement carries information that a resume can't: "I've seen this person in action. I know how they think. I trust them."

What if you could build something like that for yourself - even without a network?

Not fake testimonials. Not gaming the system. But genuine demonstration of your work and thinking. Building your career in public, in a sense. Creating an interactive biography instead of a list of bullet points.

Something that shows not just what you've done, but how you actually think. How you approach problems. What you're like to work with.

What This Could Look Like

I'm speculating here. But imagine:

Is this possible? I honestly don't know. There are real obstacles - privacy concerns, verification problems, the challenge of evaluating soft skills at scale.

But I believe it's worth working toward. And I believe AI could be part of building it - not by automating the existing broken system faster, but by enabling something genuinely new.

What You Can Do Now

This is all speculative. The system we have is the system we have, at least for now.

So what can you actually do?

Looking Forward

I built ReApply to help people succeed in the system as it exists today. It's a practical tool for a broken reality.

But I think about what could come next. How AI tools could help build a better reality, not just optimize within the broken one.

I don't know exactly what that looks like. I'm still working it out. But I believe the principles matter: human-centered, not automation-centered. Augmentation, not replacement. Tools that help people present themselves as whole humans, not just bullet points optimized for filters.

The technology exists to build something better. Whether we will is up to us.