Secondly, skill verification is a form of leaky abstraction and may not be what hiring managers want. It’s most often not about finding the most skilled candidate but rather the most compatible candidate. This can commonly mean finding the least sucky person from a pool of sucky people.

Hiring managers can game that by setting requirements criteria for a job. If you want extremely skilled people then get down to the metal and find candidates that like to work without tools or abstractions. If you super versatile candidates find people with experience in a bazillion different tools. If you just want a body to fill a seat that is quick to hire/fire select for the latest trendy framework.

The best way to determine the right candidate is to ignore the nonsense on their resume and just talk to people. Dig in and see what they really want and then challenge it with questions only they can answer. Most people are bodies just wanting to be hired without bringing anything special to the table so that’s what most employers target for. The real challenge here is finding people that are highly skilled in a market where exceptional skills outside the bell curve are not commonly rewarded, because these people will not self identify as awesome when looking for work in compatibility driven system. The people that most typically do identify as awesome tend to not be as awesome as they believe.

And honestly, validating skills like that is strictly something a mid level (no matter what your title is) “engineer” would do.

Every interview I have had since 2014 - and I have had 5 since then including three as a strategic hire (still hands on keyboard) by a new to the company director/CTO and one at BigTech and now full time staff consultant (cloud + app dev) has been behavioral where I had to convince then that I was “smart and gets things done”.

No matter what generic set of skills you have Kubernetes, AWS, etc, everyone and their dog have those skills - or at least enough people to make it difficult to stand out.

If you do have a niche set of skills that not every one has (raises hand) you aren’t randomly spamming ATS’s and going through all of the standard interviewing processes. You’re being pushed through by a decision maker.

You aren’t going to get hired in today’s market based on a generic set of skills without selling yourself as more than that. Every open rec gets hundreds of applications within a day.

I am currently in the pool as the for lack of a better term and stolen from Amazon (former employer) as a “bar raiser”. I’m not going to ask you about K8s trivia.

I’m going to ask you “what project are you most proud of” and then delve deep in the complexity of the project, your role and scope, your decision mskinv process etc.

I like your idea of verifiable skills but I don’t think the proposal is solid. We need a trusted third-party as a validator so everyone is happy. Otherwise, we bring bias and corruption into this.

The problem is currently solved by professional certification — yes it could be gamed but it provides an official confirmation from a reputable source rather than someone’s word that you’re good.

Please keep iterating! We need better tools!

- You say "engineering" verification, I checked and it's all computer science, monkey coding, full stack whatever, not only is that NOT engineering, it wasn't before generative AI, and it's definitely not now. This is programming. Programming is writing, and with AI it's more of storytelling rather than engineering.

- How would this platform measure real engineering skills? Critical thinking, problem solving, etc.? What about Electrical Engineering? Civil Engineering? Robotics design? Etc.

- I didn't open an account, but on the first page it asks for LinkedIn.. really? I don't trust most of what I read there. GitHub? Not only does it bring us back to software-related topics, but what if I don't use GitHub?

I think the best way to verify someone's skills in the engineering world is a portfolio that shows their projects and what was accomplished during them. A resume will never be enough, and interviews should be limited to personal interactions and assessing how the potential candidate communicates. Where needed, maybe an assignment to complete and return after a few days -one that mimics the potential project or role they will be working on- because asking questions during an interview is not enough to measure their skills at all.