Musk is recruiting. The ad reveals what recruiters value most now

Elon Musk wants to see your results, not your cute resume. The approach is a way for recruiters to focus on results and avoid “the noise of the job market”.

Tesla’s chief executive this week urged people who want to work on the AI ​​chip Dojo3 of your xAI send by email three points describing the “most difficult technical problems who resolved” in previous jobs.

Musk’s objective approach, which is evident in one of the businessman on X, reflects a focus on problem solvings instead of fancy resumes or cover letters.

“Basically, Musk is just trying get straight to the point in the job market”, explains the recruiter Michelle Volbergfounder of , a startup that pays technology workers to recommend colleagues to key positions.

According to Volberg, the CVs or LinkedIn profiles do not always make it clear to employers what are a person’s skills.

Asking a candidate to reveal three battles he won can help recruiting managers reach the core capabilities from someone, says Volberg, who hopes more employers will adopt this way of thinking: “Elon is showing the way that the job market will follow”.

According to the recruiter, more and more technology companies are asking job candidates to demonstrate their technical skills by explaining How did you arrive at an answer or solution?.

This tendency is part of what appears to be a “show your work” in Silicon Valley, where huge spending on AI projects and a hangover from boom of pandemic-era hiring are driving growth austerity in hiring in almost all areas.

Volberg says that recruiting managers at large companies told him that are tired of relying on CVs so adapted to a job offer that reveal little about the candidates themselves.

Asking job seekers to identify a small number of concrete problems they have solved can help overcome this challenge and bring clarity, he explains. “They don’t want to see CVs full of flourishes that were written by ChatGPT“.

The “points method” is similar to the guidance that Volberg’s company already gives to candidates: focus less in adjectives and more in results.

Musk’s strategy may have some risksit says David Murrayexecutive chairman of , a San Francisco startup focused on reinventing performance reviews.

According to Murray, asking people to provide summaries of their biggest technology wins could mean an employer like Tesla loses money. discreet or introverted employeeswho may not do as good a job at promoting themselves.

Key achievement bullet points, more than a typical resume, require people to defend their work—to do marketing themselves.

Murray also points out that Musk’s approach ignores the impacts of the so-called Dunning-Kruger effectin which people who are not excellent at something tend to overestimate their abilities, and those who are aces can assuming that a task is easy for anyone.

But this is a problem for employers. For those looking for a job, the conclusion is simple: forget your cute CVpromote the victories he had in your previous jobs.