When AI can do the credentialed work, credentials stop being the signal. What replaces them? Judgment, taste, and the ability to sit with ambiguity.

Read the full essay: https://afterthegrind.ai/posts/2026-02-14-the-resume-is-dead/

Let me tell you what a resume used to prove. It proved you could survive the grind. Four years of coursework, a series of internships, a progression of titles. Each line was a signal: this person showed up, did the work, checked the boxes, and someone in authority stamped their approval.

That system worked for decades. Not because resumes measured talent. Because the grind was the only reliable proxy we had for competence.

AI just broke that proxy.

The Credential Problem

A reasonably intelligent person with access to current AI tools can now produce work product — analysis, writing, code, financial models, marketing strategies — that would have taken a credentialed professional years to develop the skill to create. The output looks the same. Sometimes better.

So what exactly is the credential signaling?

If a fresh graduate can use AI to produce a pitch deck that rivals what a five-year associate would have built manually, the pitch deck itself tells you nothing about the person who made it. The signal has collapsed.

What the Resume Can't Show

The resume was always a poor instrument. It measured things that were easy to measure: degrees, titles, years. It never captured what actually makes someone valuable. Can this person interpret ambiguous information and make a call when the data is incomplete? Can they build trust? Can they imagine a future that doesn't exist yet?

Human value in the post-AI economy lives in four domains: Interpretive, Integrative, Interpersonal, and Imaginative. These are capacities, not credentials. You can't get a degree in judgment. You can't certify taste.

Demonstrated Over Declared

If the resume is dead, what replaces it? Demonstrated judgment. Portfolios over diplomas. Case studies over bullet points. Showing your thinking, not just your output.

Don't show me the deliverable. Show me the decisions you made along the way. Show me where you disagreed with the AI's suggestion and why. Show me judgment.

The Identity Shift

The resume is dead. Your value isn't. But you're going to have to prove it in ways that no piece of paper can capture.

Start demonstrating. Stop declaring.

Read the full essay at afterthegrind.ai