For decades, recruiting has run on proxies, signals we use to guess at someone’s ability when we can’t measure it directly.

Not because recruiters wanted it that way.

When you have hundreds of applicants and a few minutes for each, you reach for shortcuts. A degree from a prestigious school. Five years at a name-brand company. A resume dense with the right keywords. A polished LinkedIn profile. A referral from someone you trust.

None of these prove a person can do the job. They’re signals we’ve assumed correlate with performance. And for years, proxy-based hiring really was good enough.

That era is shifting.

The Proxy