Resumes Are Lies: The Case for ‘Proof of Work’ from Your Talent Acquisition Agency India
We’ve been in tech vetting for 10+ years. We’ll let you in on a secret. Resumes are lies. Not always malicious lies. But, they are almost always works of creative fiction.
1 in 3 workers (over 30%) ADMIT to lying on their resumes.
Some studies suggest that figure is closer to 70%. And interviews are often theatrical displays to back up those lies.
It’s no surprise that management experts estimate that up to 46% of all new hires will fail within 18 months. The traditional hiring model is broken.
A modern talent acquisition agency in India MUST offer more reliable recruitment models. This post is about our model. We call it ‘proof of work.’
Failures of Traditional Vetting
Why is the system so broken? It starts with the resume. The resume today is a marketing document. Applicants stuff them with keywords to beat ATS (Applicant Tracking System) software.
And, they exaggerate like it’s their real job. An engineer will list ‘Expert in Python’ when they’ve only completed a tutorial.
Then comes the interview. This is a test of likability, not competence. Candidates practice unstructured, hypothetical questions. They practice solving clever little coding riddles. It’s a performance. It doesn’t prove if the candidate can actually DO THE JOB.
And your typical recruitment and staffing agency in India? They are just resume-pushers and a big part of this failure. They’ll do a 15-min phone screen and a keyword search on their database. Then they’ll flood your inbox, hoping YOU do the hard work of finding the 1-in-100 who can actually code.
This model wastes everyone’s time and money.
A Better Model: The Best Talent Acquisition Solutions in India in Practice
At Cerebraix, we believe hiring is an engineering problem.
It requires data. It demands proof. Our vetting process includes four phases. Each one scientifically eliminates a different category of incompetence.
AI-Driven Objective Screening
It starts with our own technology. We don’t just search for keywords. Our proprietary AI and ML models scan our ‘Talent Cloud’ of 25,000+ professionals.
We analyze GitHub repositories. We look at contribution patterns. We study code quality metrics. We examine project scope and complexity. We look for patterns of problem-solving. This isn’t a resume search. It’s a skill-based validation.
The AI identifies candidates with genuine experience building complex systems. This phase eliminates 80% of candidates with good resumes but no proof of shipping real work.
Practical Assessment
Next, we assign real-world tasks relevant to the role. We’ll give them tasks like:
- ‘Here is a broken API. Fix it.’
- ‘Here is a live dataset. Build a predictive model, document your process, and justify your approach.’
- ‘Refactor this piece of legacy code and push it to a private Git repo.’
This takes 3-4 hours. In these hours, we see how developers actually think.
Do they ask clarifying questions? Do they verify their assumptions?
Do they refactor for readability or just make it work?
Do they test edge cases or ship fast?
We test for the job and assess if their behaviours align with the role in question. This is where we separate the ‘talkers’ and ‘whiteboard performers’ from the ‘doers.’
Human Expert Review
The practical assessment is submitted to our own senior engineers. They review every submission. They check for code quality, architectural thinking, and maintainability.
- Is the code clean?
- Is it maintainable?
- Is it scalable?
- Did they handle edge cases, or just the ‘happy path’?
A feature-complete solution built through technical debt won’t pass. A scalable solution that handles edge cases will.
Peer review is the only way to know if a candidate writes code you can build a business on.
We’re looking for developers who think like product architects. Not just feature implementers.
That’s how the best talent acquisition solutions in India review PROOF OF WORK – not resumes. This is how we’ve ratified 25,000+ professionals in our Talent Cloud!
Conclusion: Hiring with Confidence
Every leading executive search firm in India applies this level of rigor to scout the best candidates for leadership roles. We democratized that rigor.
Every developer gets the same intensity of evaluation that CXOs receive.
Not because everyone is a CXO. But because the cost of a bad IC hire often exceeds the cost of a bad exec hire when you factor in team impact.
The war for talent is real. Don’t fight it with broken weapons.
Partner with a talent acquisition agency in India that’s obsessed with hiring accuracy. Not hiring velocity.
Partner with Cerebraix!
