The CV is dying, and the death is being accelerated by the artefact being the wrong shape for the work the recruiter, the hiring manager, and the candidate are trying to do. The CV was designed for a job market where the applicant’s history was the strongest signal of the applicant’s future performance. The job market in 2026 is not that job market, and the artefact that worked for that job market is not the artefact that works for this one.
What is replacing the CV counts as the portfolio, the work sample, the take home assignment, and the structured interview. The replacement is good for the candidate (the candidate can show rather than tell), the replacement is a better deal for the hiring manager (the hiring manager can see the work rather than read the description of the work), and the replacement is harder work for the recruiter (the recruiter has to actually read the work, which is more work than skimming the CV).
What the CV was good at
The CV worked for the things the CV was designed to do. The CV was a one or two page summary of the candidate’s employment history, the candidate’s education, and the candidate’s relevant skills. The CV worked for the recruiter who needed to screen a hundred candidates down to ten, the CV worked for the candidate who needed a standardised artefact to send to a hundred recruiters, and the CV worked for the hiring manager who needed a quick way to compare candidates who had applied for the same role.
The CV failed at the things the CV was not designed to do. The CV failed to show the applicant’s actual work, the candidate’s actual communication, and the candidate’s actual fit for the role. The CV failed at the things the recruiter, the hiring manager, and the candidate actually needed to know.
What the portfolio is good at
The portfolio is good at the things the CV was bad at. The portfolio is a collection of the applicant’s actual work, the applicant’s actual writing, the applicant’s actual code, the applicant’s actual designs, and the applicant’s actual projects. The portfolio runs as the applicant showing rather than telling, and the portfolio sits as the applicant demonstrating the fit for the role rather than claiming the fit for the role.
The portfolio amounts to the right fit for the roles where the work product sits as the test (writing, design, code, photography, marketing), and the portfolio stands as the wrong fit for the roles where the work product is harder to show (operations, management, sales, support). For the roles where the portfolio amounts to the wrong fit, the take home assignment and the structured interview are filling the gap.
What the work sample is good at
The work sample is a piece of work the applicant produces as part of the interview process, and the work sample serves as the closest thing the hiring process has to a true test of the candidate’s ability to do the work. The work sample is a piece of work the applicant can show in a portfolio, a piece of work the hiring manager can grade against a rubric, and a piece of work that the applicant and the hiring manager can discuss in the interview.
The work sample becomes the right format for the roles where the actual work is hard to fake (writing, design, code), and the work sample is less good for the roles where the work is more about the process than the product. The work sample is also controversial because the work sample takes the applicant’s time, and the work sample is sometimes used to extract free labour from the candidate. The hiring teams that get this right are the ones that pay the candidate for the work sample, or that scope the work sample to something that can be done in two hours.
What the structured interview is good at
The structured interview is an interview where every candidate is asked the same questions, the answers are graded against a rubric, and the interviewer’s judgement is constrained by the rubric. The structured interview serves as the right format for the roles where the fit is more about the way the candidate thinks than the work the candidate has done, and the structured interview is good for the roles where the hiring manager is trying to avoid the bias that unstructured interviews produce.
The structured interview is harder to do well than the CV screen. The CV screen is a quick filter; the structured interview is a four hour process that requires the hiring manager, the hiring manager’s peers, and the cross functional partners to all be in the room. The enterprises that get this right are the ones that have invested in the interview training, the rubric development, and the calibration that the structured interview requires.
What this means for the candidate
If you are looking for a job in 2026, the CV is still the artefact the recruiter wants, and the CV is no longer the artefact that gets you the offer. The portfolio runs as the artefact that gets you the interview, the work sample counts as the artefact that gets you the second interview, and the structured interview runs as the artefact that gets you the offer. Build all four. Use the CV to get past the recruiter, the portfolio to get past the hiring manager, the work sample to get past the technical interview, and the structured interview to get past the cross functional panel.
What this means for the hiring team
If you are hiring in 2026, the CV screen sits as the least predictive part of your process, and the CV screen amounts to the part you are spending the most time on. Replace the CV screen with the portfolio review, the work sample, and the structured interview. The work is harder than skimming the CV, and the work becomes the work that actually identifies the applicant who can do the job.
The bottom line
The patterns the post covers have been showing up in production for long enough that the patterns have names, the failures, the mitigations, the gaps. The work the security team and the engineering team and the operations team are quietly doing today sits as the work that decides whether the practice the post names sits as a tool the team uses or a liability the team is paying for.
Sources & Further Reading
All claims in this article are sourced from primary documentation, vendor advisories, and reputable security researchers.
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