There was a time when sending a resume was all one had to do to get the job. But not anymore. With AI making every resume ‘perfect,’ recruiters are now looking for a new way to decide if the candidate fits in or not. And talking of new ways, Elon Musk is surely the one to lead the way.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is officially moving away from the traditional resume and cover letter. This change is specifically for people who want to join his AI5 chip design team. This shift follows a new trend in the business world. Companies are starting to value what a person can actually do, their real skills, more than what is written on a piece of paper.
The ‘three bullet point’ rule
Instead of a long paper listing every school and past job, Musk has made the process very short. According to a January post on X, Musk is asking applicants to provide just three short bullet points.
To get the job, Musk wrote on X that he wants to see a list of the ‘toughest technical problems you’ve solved.’ This is happening because Tesla is starting work again on its Dojo3 AI supercomputer project.
This is not the first time Musk has done this. While he was leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he told government workers to email him just five bullet points of what they had achieved lately. In an X post from last February, Musk warned that if they did not respond, it would be seen as a resignation. That move led to more than 250,000 federal employees losing their jobs, according to data from the DOGE campaign.
Why the resume culture is dying in workplaces
The move away from paper is happening because of a big problem: Artificial Intelligence. Since AI can now write a perfect resume with no mistakes and all the right words, every person who applies looks exactly the same.
John Sullivan, a hiring expert, told Fortune that “AI is killing the resume.” He explained that the resume has been a bad tool for a long time. Now, AI makes it even worse. Recruiters have to look at thousands of perfect papers just to find one person to talk to.
Sullivan also told Fortune that being good at writing a resume does not mean you will be good at the job. In fact, when he worked for companies like Agilent Technologies and HP, he found that the best workers often had the worst resumes. Sullivan told Fortune, the best employees are usually too busy doing great work to spend time fixing their resumes.
The problem with AI ‘washing’
AI has changed everything for people looking for work. According to a 2026 report by Novoresume, over 54% of job seekers are now using AI to write their resumes. Many people use these AI tools to ‘cheat’ the system. They use software to find the exact keywords that a company’s computer, known as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), is looking for. This makes the computer think the candidate is a perfect match, even if they are not.
Because of this, many managers feel they can no longer trust what they read.
When every cover letter sounds like it was written by a robot, it is hard to see the real person. This ‘AI washing’ of resumes has made the old way of hiring a nightmare. Recruiters are now getting flooded with applications that look amazing but might be fake. This is why leaders like Musk are asking for specific, hard-to-fake examples of technical problems instead.
A growing global trend
Musk is not the only one changing things. According to The State of Skills-Based Hiring 2023 report by TestGorilla, almost 75% of companies now use skill tests to hire people. This is a big increase from the 56% seen the year before.
For Musk, a real conversation is worth more than a college degree. In a February interview with Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison, Musk said that if a conversation is not ‘Wow’ after 20 minutes, you should believe the talk, not the paper.
Though most jobs at Tesla still ask for a resume for now, but many are starting to ask for ‘evidence of excellence’ instead. This shows that Musk wants proof of talent, not just a list of titles.