The resume is a document designed for a specific moment in professional history where employers needed a standardised summary to move candidates through a structured evaluation process efficiently.

That moment is ending for several reasons.

AI is now the first reader of most professional applications. Systems trained to filter and rank candidates are working from the same surface-level signals that were always gameable — keywords, titles, institution names — but now with far less human judgment applied early in the process. The result is that résumés have become optimisation exercises rather than honest representations of capability.

At the same time, the professionals producing the most significant work are doing so in contexts that résumés struggle to represent. Founders, creative directors, cross-disciplinary strategists, and technical builders often have work histories that resist clean categorisation. The résumé format, designed for linear employment, obscures more than it reveals.

Proof addresses both problems because it is specific and harder to game. It is cumulative and structured; it can represent complex, non-linear professional trajectories more accurately than a one-page summary.

Mitch Chibundu's position — developed through a decade in fintech and emerging technology, through Hourze, and through her writing — is that the resume will not disappear but will be subordinated to a more granular layer of evidence. The professionals who build that layer proactively, through consistent documentation and structured verification, will have a durable advantage as evaluation systems shift.