When Ellis Neder interviewed for a job as head of design at Foxglove three years ago, a platform for robotics developers, he was asked to come in for a few days to work. He was hesitant to invest the time, but took some days off and flew to Foxglove's San Francisco offices to work over a long weekend.

Neder tells me he loved it. The work trial, which involved fixing a user experience issue within Foxglove's app, let him see up close the pace at which the team moved, how the startup's leadership team functioned, and the bigger problems he would tackle upon joining.

Now he oversees work trials for other prospective employees at Foxglove, as the company uses them for every role. People ask him, "Can I use AI during my work trial?" Neder answers, "We expect you to use AI, and we will give you whatever AI tools you want." It's not just about evaluating a candidate's competency. "We want them to see what it's like to really work with us."

Last month, I wrote that the age of AI, the résumé has lost its cachet. Online job portals are launching them into the void. Instead of relying on your past experience, recruiters are more actively sourcing candidates on LinkedIn, relying on referrals, and putting job seekers through work trials, job simulations, or picking people based on personality traits.

Welcome to the show your work era of job hunting. It's not enough to ace an interview and list your GPA and previous employers — job seekers need to demonstrate those skills and aptitudes live. AI lets everyone talk; your next boss wants to be sure you can walk. Just as college professors have pivoted back to in-person Blue Book exams and middle school math teachers require equations written out step-by-step, hiring managers are looking for workers who can back up what they say they know. The job interview has always been a sort of audition; now companies are increasingly looking for people who can get on the proverbial stage and perform — not just to prove that they're real in a world of generative AI fakes and frauds, but also to show that they can use AI.‍

Welcome to the show your work era of job hunting.

AI is "changing not just how we get the job, but what we do in the job and what's expected of us in the job as well," says Patrick McCue, senior vice president at talent management firm Right Management. Companies want workers who combine hard and soft skills, like vibe coding marketing managers. People who can add AI skills to their portfolio and show how they would use them are increasingly valuable. "The future job market is going to definitely benefit the bold — people who are willing to put themselves out there with just a little bit of knowledge and understanding, knowing that they will be able to fulfill whatever it is they're asked to do."

During the 2000s, employers added degree requirements to jobs that had previously been open to those without college degrees, like managers, administrative assistants, sales representatives, and IT workers. But between 2017 and 2019, when companies struggled to fill managerial and IT roles in particular, companies dropped degree requirements by 46% for middle-skill positions, and by nearly a third for high-skill ones, according to research published by Harvard Business Review in 2022. Companies like Google and IBM hopped on the trend. Some positions in healthcare followed suit in 2020, as the pressure to hire workers during the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Skills-based hiring, which emphasizes assessments over credentials, started to rise.

Now, as the job market tightened and companies have shed the employees they overhired during the 2010s tech boom, employers are even hungrier for skills. The hype around generative AI and Silicon Valley's promises of a new era of productivity have amplified the drive to hire the most effective people. The number of job postings requiring AI skills has quadrupled, from about 50,000 in March 2024 to nearly 200,000 last month, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution. A 2025 survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that the proportion of employers who say they're using skills-based hiring increased from 65% to 70% from 2024 to 2025. More than 60% of 3,500 business leaders surveyed in late 2025 by payment intelligence firm Payscale said they had updated the expectations of existing roles to include AI usage — at both tech and non-tech jobs.

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