The post-resume ATS
Resumes are still the universal artefact, but they are no longer the unit of evaluation. What signal looks like when the document was written by a co-pilot.
A candidate sent us a perfectly-tailored resume in October. Every bullet point keyword-matched to the job description. The formatting was clean. The experience read coherently. They had used an AI rewriter. So had the next 200 candidates.
Resumes are still the universal artefact every candidate has and every ATS knows how to parse. They are no longer, on their own, the unit of evaluation. The artefact is too easy to optimise. The signal that matters now lives somewhere else.
Where the signal moved
- Voice-of-candidate narratives. Two short answers in the candidate's own writing tell us more than any resume.
- Work samples. A 30-minute take-home, a portfolio, a public PR. Candidates self-select.
- Structured references. Three short questions to two prior managers, returned in writing. Slow but high-signal.
- The shape of the path. Less about title-progression and more about what each role taught.
How we changed the product
SourceHire used to weight extracted resume content heavily. We don't any more. We weight the candidate's narrative answers, their declared logistics (work auth, comp range, location), and the shape of their structured profile. The resume is still there — recruiters want to see it — but the matching engine doesn't pretend the resume is the truth.
