The Market Does Not Reward Competence Anymore

There is a structural failure emerging in the market. Competence no longer guarantees opportunity. That shift does not come from a sudden lack of talent. It comes from a change in how the system detects, filters, and ultimately selects it. This is not a complaint. It is a pattern, and once recognised it becomes difficult to ignore.

The Signal Is Broken

Hiring once relied on judgement, and today it relies on filtering. Keywords stand in for understanding, CVs get scanned rather than read, and interviews follow scripts that reward preparation over thinking.

Between companies and candidates, layers have multiplied. Recruiters, agencies, intermediaries, each introduced to increase efficiency, yet each adding noise and distance from the underlying reality of the work.

As these layers accumulate, decision-makers move further away from the problems they intend to solve. The process begins to optimise for movement rather than clarity, making strong profiles harder to detect, not because they have disappeared, but because the system has lost the capacity to recognise them with precision.

The Economics Behind the Distortion

This distortion does not happen by accident. It follows incentives. A significant portion of the hiring pipeline operates on percentage-based models where revenue depends on closing, not understanding. Under that pressure, the system optimises for throughput : more CVs sent, more interviews scheduled, more roles kept active, because volume scales revenue while judgement does not.

Hiring, in that sense, has quietly shifted from talent selection to risk management. The objective is no longer to find the best fit, but to avoid being wrong in a way that is visible. Safe candidates move forward. Predictable profiles get prioritised. Anything requiring real judgement becomes a liability.

This is reinforced by how success gets measured. Recruitment performance rarely tracks long-term outcomes such as retention, impact, or contribution. Instead, it relies on vanity metrics: pipeline volume, time-to-fill, number of interviews, offer acceptance rates. These are leading indicators of activity, not lagging indicators of quality.

The system optimises what it measures. So it produces movement, not accuracy.

Quality, which demands time and context, becomes secondary. A structural misalignment emerges: companies believe they purchase expertise, while in practice they often purchase a layer that extracts value without improving selection and rarely engages with the actual constraints of the role.

In markets such as France, the gap becomes visible quickly. The narrative of a “startup nation” promises speed and modernity, yet everyday interactions reveal inflated titles masking shallow roles, vague descriptions disconnected from real engineering constraints, and intermediaries unable to articulate what they recruit for. This does not reflect a shortage of talent. It reflects a failure to process signal in a system that presents itself as modern while relying on outdated mechanisms.

What the System Actually Rewards

When signal degrades, selection shifts. The system stops rewarding competence and starts rewarding what it can easily detect: visibility over depth, narrative over delivery, conformity over challenge. Profiles that perform well within this environment rise because they fit the measurement model, while those that require deeper judgement fall away during early filtering.

Most hiring processes, at that point, no longer aim to discover talent. They aim to reject risk. The default posture becomes defensive, not exploratory. And in doing so, they systematically filter out the very profiles they claim to seek.

This outcome does not arise from intent. It follows mechanics. Any system selects for what it can measure, and when measurement remains superficial, selection follows, gradually reshaping the visible talent pool and reinforcing the same limitations.

Candidates Adapt Too

The distortion does not remain confined to the system. Candidates adapt to it. They optimise CVs for keywords, rehearse narratives that mirror expected answers, and learn how to navigate filters rather than demonstrate problem-solving ability. The focus shifts from craft to performance, from substance to presentation.

As this behaviour spreads, the system reinforces itself through aligned incentives: those who play the game progress, those who do not remain unseen, widening the gap between competence and recognition.

The Fallacy of the Cover Letter

The cover letter stands as the clearest expression of this dynamic. Framed as a signal of motivation and understanding, it has become a ritual of conformity. Candidates reverse-engineer expectations, replicate company language, and produce carefully structured narratives designed to minimise rejection risk rather than communicate genuine thinking.

On the receiving side, the document rarely receives the attention it claims. It functions as a symbolic checkpoint within a process already optimised for speed and volume. What it reveals, therefore, does not concern competence. It just reveals how well a candidate understands and submits to the system. It rewards submission over challenge, alignment over insight, and in doing so it degrades the overall quality of selection.

In other words, the cover letter does not filter for value. It filters for compliance.

The Cost (Paid Later)

This system does not fail immediately. Companies continue to hire, teams continue to grow, and roadmaps continue to move, creating the impression of normal operation. The cost accumulates gradually: misaligned hires introduce friction, decision-making loses depth, and organisational complexity increases without corresponding capability.

Over time, stronger profiles get filtered out while weaker fits consolidate. The organisation adapts to a lower standard, often without explicit acknowledgement, and once that standard settles, reversing it requires disproportionate effort.

What To Do About It

The market will not correct itself in the short term, but individuals and organisations can adjust their position within it. For leaders and engineers, that means seeking environments where judgement still operates, reducing dependency on layers that add noise, and creating direct signals of impact rather than relying on performative alignment.

For companies, the path requires deliberate correction: reduce the distance between evaluation and decision, invest in genuine technical judgement, remove intermediaries that fail to add clarity, and define roles based on real problems rather than templated descriptions. Organisations that take these steps distinguish themselves quickly, precisely because such discipline has become rare.

In Conclusion

Markets do not remain inefficient forever. During periods of distortion, however, competence alone does not suffice. Without signal, competence remains invisible, and what remains invisible does not get selected.

The implication follows: many capable people are not rejected for lack of ability, but for lack of visibility within a flawed system, while organisations optimise hiring without realising they select for the wrong signals.

The question therefore shifts. It no longer concerns only how capable an individual or a team might be. It concerns where that capability can be seen, understood, and applied.

Choosing that environment is no longer optional. It is strategic.

In a system that cannot recognise signal, visibility becomes a strategy.