Leonardo da Vinci Invented the Resume. Employers Dropped the 1 Part That Mattered

I would go back further. Try 540 years.

Around 1482, a 30-year-old Leonardo da Vinci wrote to Ludovico Sforza, the ruler of Milan, asking for work. It is often called the first resume.

He tailored it. Milan was preparing for war, so he led with military engineering: bridges, siege machines, cannons, armored vehicles. He used a numbered list of roughly ten claims. He buried his best skill, painting, almost as an afterthought. And he offered to demonstrate any of it in person.

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Swap the cannons for software and that is the document I read every day. The one part we dropped was the best part: the offer to prove it.

After 25 years of assessing executives, I agree with Erin. Resumes tell me what someone was responsible for and almost nothing about what changed because they were there. Candidates tailor the same document dozens of times, applicant tracking systems scan for keywords, and both sides end up guessing. Gartner predicts that by 2028, as many as one in four candidate profiles worldwide could be fake. A PDF can’t fix that.

Here’s what I would build instead.