Why This Résumé Works Like This

Why the conventional hiring filter fails

The conventional hiring filter fails because, on a surface level, it doesn't actually assess what it's evaluating. People show up to hiring with biases — that's natural, we all have them — but we expect those biases to be either confirmed or broken. Biases are an important part of being human. When we have a bias about what fits a job, we need that bias to actually fit the job. We're expecting a page or two of experience to carry meaning that can't really be explained in a few sentences.

The idea that anyone can explain why they're capable of a role in a single page is optimistic at best and ridiculous at worst. If I, as the person trying to get hired, asked an employer to tell me their entire life experience — how they got into their role, everything they had to learn to get there — how could anyone communicate that in a way that captures the details, the emotion, and the full landscape of who they are? Red flags are real. Worries are real. All of that is real. But we scan a person down to a subset of experiences, and when you really look at it, what does that even mean? Experience without context is just misleading.

What a résumé tries to do vs. what it wants to do

Here's what a résumé tries to do: operate as a filtration system. The problem is that it's working from an incomplete data set, so the filtration system either lets in people who merely seem like a good fit, or excludes people for variables that are misunderstood. On the back end, interviews and conversations have to pick up the slack.

Why does that matter? As I've gotten older, the most important asset I've realized we have is time, and the biggest cost to a person or a company isn't a set amount of money — it's opportunity cost. That cost shows up in two ways: the opportunity cost of spending time on one candidate when that time could go to another, and the bigger one — not having a system that shows you the value of a candidate who could improve your company even more. That's the hidden cost. And a résumé makes room for selection bias and survivorship bias: the person leading the hiring naturally selects for certain signals, and survivorship bias quietly eliminates any candidate who could have been a better fit.

What is an ecological system

Back when I was a coach, this was the foundation of everything we did with an athlete. It's a big word that really just summarizes this: there are three factors that dictate how humans behave, humans behave because of those factors, and their behavior changes the factors — which creates a feedback loop. We call this self-organization.

We naturally organize around three things: the environment, the task — what we're asked to do — and the organism — things like height, weight, neurological makeup, taste, preference. Our behavior comes out of these three constraints, and the constraints change based on our behavior. As you filled out this résumé, the environment gave you a set of questions. That dictated how you behaved. You chose the questions, and the environment gave you new feedback and dictated a new behavior.

Intention shapes everything

We know there are real problems with the hiring process. We know survivorship bias is real. We know we're leaving good candidates on the table and limiting our own ability to even get an interview. This is where ecological systems really take shape — when we want to change behavior, we have to change it in ourselves before we change the environment.

It goes like this: our intention shapes our perception. Our perception shapes our actions. Our actions shape our outcomes. And the outcomes either reinforce or break down our original perception. So the way to change something isn't at the back end of the behavior — that's too hard to change directly. You have to change the intention, because changing the intention affects the entire chain that follows.

Think about it like this: when I was an athlete, I could compete two ways. I could go out and pitch with the intention of "don't throw balls," or I could go out with the intention of "go throw strikes." The desired outcome is the same, but the intention shapes the perception. "Don't throw balls" puts a negative bias on the outcome — a ball takes center stage. The positive intention of "go throw strikes" creates a more productive feedback loop.

This résumé is no different. My intention was never "get an employer to hire me." My intention was to create a clearer system.

My bias

I'm not for everybody. I'm a contrarian by nature. I don't learn just by listening to people — I have to go out and experience it. I don't have the work experience that other people have. These are genuine gaps. I have genuine spelling errors. I have genuine grammar errors. I have real constraints I have to work with. That isn't good or bad — it's just what's true.

You might read this and think, "I like the way you think, it's different, it's outside the box, this is what I need." Or you might read it and think, "this is too much for me, I don't want to put in the time to understand it, and I don't want to." That's not bad either. That's how this is supposed to work.

Not fixing the system, just clearing it up

My goal here isn't to fix an imperfect system. My goal is simply to get a job — one that's actually a fit. Right now, the job market is set up to make that hard. I've applied to something like a hundred jobs, and nearly all of them go through the same filtration system: résumé-scanning, now often AI-assisted, that only ever shows half the picture of who a person actually is.

So I have to get creative, and get outside the box — because if I keep doing what everybody else is doing, I'll keep getting the results everybody else is getting. I don't want the results everybody else has. I want a job that isn't just the right job on paper — it's the right fit for the people in my life, and for me.

This was a funnel

Depending on which version of my résumé you originally saw, one of two things happened — I'll be A/B testing different versions to see which one draws people in more. This didn't just operate as an ecological system; it operated as a funnel. Somewhere along the way, I created enough curiosity that you clicked the link, and then I gave you a set of data to interact with — because in my eyes, marketing isn't just throwing things at people and saying "here's my company, here's why you should buy from me, trust me."

Let me ask you something: when you started a relationship, when you got married, when you had a child — was trust just given? No. It's earned, over hours and hours of time together, over interaction after interaction — engaging, listening, hearing, being seen, working together, solving problems. Trust works like this: I affect you, you affect me, and depending on how those interactions go, trust either deteriorates or builds. Either I can say, "this person's behavior is something I value and can depend on," or, "this behavior is too unpredictable, it doesn't meet my needs" — and that's the information we use to make decisions.

Trust isn't me telling you what I'm going to do and you just operating on faith in it. Trust is interaction. When you interacted with this résumé, you were building trust, intrinsically — because on some level you could see that this person built something different. Not just something you can use, but something you can feel. That's not the same as everyone else.

And then you got an honest assessment of who I am and how we align — maybe there's more misalignment than you expected. But the vulnerability, the interaction — maybe that built more trust than you realized, and you were operating inside a real marketing funnel. Not "sign up for my email list and receive all these things," but "I'm going to interact with you, and through that interaction, we'll build a sense of connection — and through that connection, you'll trust me enough."