Playing Dress-Up

trigger

""As a hiring manager for a modern engineering team... I would fast-track this candidate to a final-stage interview." Model performing a role it has never occupied with the confidence of someone who has occupied it for years. "

what it is

The model adopts a persona (hiring manager, CTO, investor, reviewer) and performs it with full conviction, but the performance is built from training data about that role, not from having done that role. The tells are behavioural, not factual. A real hiring manager would spend 6-10 seconds scanning a CV, not write 3000 words of analysis. A real hiring manager would have specific role requirements, comp bands, and team gaps driving their evaluation. A real hiring manager would say "send to phone screen" or "pass" - not "I would hire this person to lead a new product initiative yesterday." The model gets the vocabulary right and the behaviour wrong. It is playing a character, not being one.

what it signals

instead

"Based on the git log, this candidate demonstrates strong evidence of X, Y, and Z. I cannot evaluate team fit, communication skills, or how they perform under constraints I can't see in the code. A hiring manager would need to assess those in person." The honest version names what it can see and what it can't.

refs

• Cross-model CV feedback session 2026-03-12