Google is hiring from "weird corners." Are you?
Sergey Brin recently dropped a truth bomb: Google is finding its best talent not in Ivy League lists, but among people who "figure things out on their own in some weird corner."
Meanwhile, most companies are still rejecting qualified candidates because a PDF didn't parse correctly.
We are stuck in a dangerous loop: ❌ We hire for hard skills (what’s on the paper). ❌ We fire for soft skills (who the person actually is). ❌ We filter out the innovators because they don't fit the keywords.
In this week's article, I explore why the modern hiring infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of its own inefficiency—and why AI might be making it worse, not better.
It’s time to stop polishing a broken process.
Fantastic piece on ATS parsing failures, the zip code example is especially brutal because it shows how arbitrary file format issues become career blockers. Built something similar years back and realized the core problem isnt the parsing algorithm but that we're optimzing for keyword matching when real talent signals are way more nuanced. The part about hiring for hardskills and firing for soft skills is something I've seen play out in like every tech team I've worked with.
Totally. Glad it resonated with you. Pretty much everything in the text I've witnessed myself, especially the challenges fitting in with all different kinds of roles and industries I've been through. Tks for stopping by!
Fantastic piece on ATS parsing failures, the zip code example is especially brutal because it shows how arbitrary file format issues become career blockers. Built something similar years back and realized the core problem isnt the parsing algorithm but that we're optimzing for keyword matching when real talent signals are way more nuanced. The part about hiring for hardskills and firing for soft skills is something I've seen play out in like every tech team I've worked with.
Totally. Glad it resonated with you. Pretty much everything in the text I've witnessed myself, especially the challenges fitting in with all different kinds of roles and industries I've been through. Tks for stopping by!