Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How to Use Skill Proxies to Prove What You Know
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot on this show about building skills, right? Auditing them, stacking them, finding mentors. But there's a question that keeps coming up from listeners that I think we've been dancing around. Luna: Which is — how do you actually prove you have a skill? Not just claim it on a resume. Lucas: Exactly. And the honest answer is, most people rely on proxies. A degree. A certification. A job title. Those are all stand-ins for actual competence. But the problem is, those proxies are getting weaker. A 2025 study from the Society for Human Resource Management found that 67 percent of HR professionals said traditional credentials are becoming less reliable as indicators of job performance. Luna: That's huge. And I think the reaction from a lot of job seekers is, 'Well, what do I use instead?' Lucas: Right. So today I want to talk about a different kind of proxy. Not the credential you hang on the wall, but the artifact you can point to and say, 'I made this, here's how it works, here's the problem it solved.' I'm calling them skill proxies. Luna: Skill proxies. I like that. So give me a concrete example. Lucas: Sure. There's a guy named Marcus I came across in a Reddit thread — he was a community college dropout in Ohio, worked retail for three years. He wanted to get into data engineering. He didn't have a CS degree, didn't have any certifications. But he taught himself SQL and Python by working through public datasets. Luna: And he just put those projects on GitHub? Lucas: Not just put them up. He documented every step. He wrote a series of case studies analyzing CDC health data — like, 'How did diabetes diagnosis rates vary by county during the pandemic?' Each case study had a clear question, a methodology, a cleaned dataset, and a summary of findings. He linked them on his LinkedIn and in his resume. Luna: And it worked? Lucas: He got a data engineering role at a Fortune 500 health insurer. The recruiter told him later that what got him the interview wasn't his education — it was that his SQL scripts were readable, commented, and the analysis showed he could think through a business problem. The proxy was the case study. Luna: That's a great story. And I think the key is that he didn't just say 'I know SQL.' He showed how he uses SQL to answer a real question. Lucas: Exactly. And this applies across fields. For a marketer, a skill proxy might be a campaign analysis that shows how you improved conversion rates. For a project manager, it could be a retrospective document that demonstrates how you resolved a conflict on a cross-functional team. For a designer, it's a case study of a product redesign with before and after metrics. Luna: So what makes a good skill proxy versus a weak one? Because I've seen people put up a GitHub repo that's just a README and a couple of files, and that doesn't help. Lucas: Right. A strong proxy has three elements. First, it's contextual — it solves a real problem, not a toy problem. Second, it's documented — someone outside your head can understand what you did and why. Third, it has a result — even if the result is 'we learned that this approach didn't work,' that's still valuable. Luna: I'd add a fourth: it should be easy to consume. If I have to dig through 50 files to understand what you did, the signal gets lost. Lucas: That's a good point. And it ties into something I've noticed on the hiring side. When I've been involved in hiring, the candidates who stand out are the ones who have a single, powerful artifact they can walk me through in five minutes. Not a list of ten projects. Luna: So quality over quantity. But what about skills that are harder to artifact? Like leadership, or communication? Lucas: Those are harder, but not impossible. One thing I've seen work is a 'before and after' document. For example, a team lead might write a one-page memo describing how they restructured their team's stand-up meetings, the friction they addressed, and the outcome — maybe cycle time improved by 20 percent. That's a proxy for leadership and process thinking. Luna: Interesting. And it doesn't have to be public. You can bring it to an interview as a leave-behind. Lucas: Exactly. The point isn't to broadcast everything — it's to have evidence ready. And I think this is becoming more important because of how hiring has changed. Companies are relying more on skills assessments, take-home exercises, and portfolio reviews. The resume is becoming a summary, not the main event. Luna: And yet a lot of people still spend hours polishing their resume and zero hours building a proxy. That feels like a misallocation of effort. Lucas: Huge misallocation. I'd argue that if you're early in your career, or pivoting, building one strong skill proxy is worth more than a dozen resume bullet points. Because the proxy does the convincing for you. Luna: And it also helps you, because the act of building it forces you to actually learn the skill at a deeper level. You can't fake a case study. Lucas: Right. So let's talk about how to choose the right proxy. The first question is: what skill do you want to signal? Be specific. Not 'data analysis' — 'cleaning and analyzing customer churn data using Python and pandas.' Then ask: what's the smallest, most impressive demonstration of that skill? Luna: And it should be based on real data if possible. Even if it's public data from the government or a dataset on Kaggle. That adds credibility. Lucas: Second question: who is the audience? If you're applying to a startup, they might care more about speed and scrappiness. If it's a bank, they might care about rigor and documentation. Tailor the proxy to the context. Luna: I've seen a barista use a spreadsheet of her tips and shift metrics to show she could track KPIs and optimize scheduling. She got a B2B sales role. Lucas: That's a perfect example. She didn't have a sales background, but she had a proxy that showed analytical thinking and attention to detail. Hiring managers are starved for evidence. They get thousands of resumes that all say 'results-oriented team player.' A specific artifact breaks through the noise. Luna: And that's where I think the concept of a proxy is actually more honest than a credential. A credential says 'a third party vouches that this person sat through a course.' A proxy says 'here is what this person can actually do.' Lucas: I think that's a really important distinction. And I want to be careful here — I'm not saying degrees and certifications have no value. For regulated fields like medicine or law, they're non-negotiable. But for a huge swath of knowledge work, the credential is just a filter. The proxy is the signal. Luna: And if today's episode gave you a useful framework for thinking about your own career, here's a thought. The way we keep this show ad-free and focused on substance is listener support. So if you found value, consider buying us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep doing episodes like this. Lucas: Yeah, and honestly, knowing listeners find these practical enough to support is what keeps us going. So thanks to anyone who does. Luna: Alright. Back to proxies. So let's say someone listening wants to build their first skill proxy this week. What's the first step? Lucas: Pick one skill you want to be known for. Not three, one. Then think of a problem that skill can solve — ideally one you've already encountered at work or in a side project. Then spend two hours documenting how you'd approach it. That's it. You don't need to build the whole thing. Even a well-structured outline of your thinking is a proxy. Luna: And if you get stuck, there's a great resource: the concept of 'working out loud' — sharing your learning process in public. That itself becomes a proxy for curiosity and communication. Lucas: Exactly. So to wrap up, I want to leave listeners with this: in a world where anyone can claim anything on a resume, the person who brings evidence wins. Start building your skill proxies today, even if they're imperfect. The act of creating them will teach you as much as the final artifact shows. Luna: And next time you update your resume, instead of adding another bullet point, ask yourself: 'What proxy can I attach to this?' It changes the whole game. Lucas: Great note to end on. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back with another episode soon.