![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2278053427-e1784042254147.jpg?w=2048\")
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The most valuable hires, according to Ramp cofounder and CEO Eric Glyman, aren\u2019t the ones with the lengthiest or most impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. They\u2019re the ones not even in the job market yet.<\/p>\n
Glyman\u2019s hiring philosophy runs against the standard corporate playbook of a litany of credentials, crazy connections, and elite college degrees. He\u2019s after what he calls a \u201cspike,\u201d or exceptional drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m less interested in what is the r\u00e9sum\u00e9,\u201d he said on David Senra\u2019s podcast in an episode published Sunday. \u201cI\u2019m far more interested in proof of work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senra\u2019s podcast counts Jeff Bezos, Shopify CEO Tobi L\u00fctke, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong among its listeners, according to reporting from Fortune<\/em>\u2019s Lily Mae Lazarus, and has become something of an obsession among the world\u2019s most powerful CEOs. Ramp is now Senra\u2019s largest advertiser and is a corporate card and expense-management startup that automates business spending. Ramp serves 70,000 customers, crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue, and is currently valued at $44 billion.<\/p>\n Glyman said \u201cproof of work\u201d tends to show up early and in unexpected places.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the podcast, he described an entire community of Ramp engineers whom the company found because, as teenagers, they had poured 80 or 100 hours a week into Minecraft. Some of them built private servers so entertaining that other kids flocked to play. One even paid his way through college\u2014which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2014by turning that obsession into a small business before he was old enough to drive, said Glyman, who\u2019s worth nearly $2 billion, according to Forbes<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Traditional hiring filters, Glyman said, would have screened those candidates out for not having a college degree or a well-rounded profile. Instead, they had an obsessive focus and the technical chops to push the software well past what it was built to do.<\/p>\n That drive has become so important, in fact, Ramp\u2019s hiring process now consciously hunts for that signal. They scan places like GitHub or \u201cbizarre fringe communities,\u201d Glyman said, looking for people. The company also leans heavily on referrals from people with what he called \u201casymmetric information\u201d about who a candidate really is. Even a grueling 15-hour interview loop, he argued, tells you less than two business days of actually working alongside someone.<\/p>\n Ramp\u2019s decision to focus on younger talent is also economical. Glyman likened top early-career candidates to a mispricing in the market. By a student\u2019s junior-year summer, or after five years on the job, that talent is \u201cpriced in,\u201d and Ramp finds itself bidding against quant firms and AI labs paying top dollar.\u00a0<\/p>\n But if they were to catch that same candidate as a freshman\u2014before there\u2019s a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to bid on\u2014then the math changes. He also argued it builds loyalty.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can find signs of incredible aptitude, drive, and potential for performance early on, and start to build an affinity,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we try to find those folks and give them a lot more responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n The billionaire Ramp CEO said there\u2019s another important characteristic that matters when hiring: motivation. He said he spends a considerable amount of time trying to understand what a candidate actually wants over the next five, 10, 15 years independent of working at his company specifically. He also evaluates whether that ambition genuinely overlaps with what Ramp is trying to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf there isn\u2019t a clear sign of evidence of why they might want the same thing and how it can connect, don\u2019t worry about it,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t waste your time.\u201d<\/p>\n Glyman\u2019s philosophy about hiring matches other top CEOs. Elon Musk, for example, has said much the same thing repeatedly.<\/p>\n \u201cI agree with Elon\u2019s philosophy of trying to find really smart people, in part because it allows you to find maybe something like a mispricing in the market,\u201d Glyman said.<\/p>\n In a joint podcast episode with Stripe cofounder John Collison and podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Musk said his aspirational advice on hiring is: \u201cDon\u2019t look at the r\u00e9sum\u00e9,\u201d and that he asks his staff for bullet points on \u201cevidence of exceptional ability.\u201d Musk also weighs a candidate\u2019s talent, drive, and trustworthiness, adding that \u201cgoodness of heart is important.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI underweighted that at one point,\u201d Musk continued. \u201cSo, are they a good person? Trustworthy? Smart and talented and hardworking?\u201d<\/p>\n Kurt Alexander, president of Omni Hotels & Resorts, also told Fortune<\/em>\u2019s Preston Fore he screens candidates with a deliberately disarming question: \u201cWhat are some of the rough edges in your personality?\u201d He argued this can reveal more than a polished r\u00e9sum\u00e9 ever could.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHard work beats talent when talent doesn\u2019t work hard,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut if talent works hard, talent wins.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Ramp #CEO #hires #talent #r\u00e9sum\u00e9like #engineers #built #Minecraft #servers #teens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The most valuable hires, according to Ramp cofounder and CEO Eric Glyman, aren\u2019t the ones with the lengthiest or most impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. They\u2019re the ones not even in the job… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1039,369,6921,2091,818,567,13511,8540,564,4450,13510,4288,566,12448,470,565,7771],"class_list":["post-12185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-built","tag-ceo","tag-engineers","tag-hires","tag-hiring","tag-management","tag-minecraft","tag-ramp","tag-recruiting","tag-recruitment","tag-resumelike","tag-resumes","tag-retention","tag-servers","tag-talent","tag-talent-acquisition","tag-teens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why Ramp\u2019s Eric Glyman hires for \u2018proof of work\u2019 over r\u00e9sum\u00e9s<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Glyman also looks for motivation when hiring<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Glyman\u2019s hiring strategy echoes Elon Musk and other execs<\/strong><\/h2>\n