Clipboard Health's Zack Ganieany on performance-based hiring and why resumes are broken
Oct 8, 2025 with Zack Ganieany
Key Points
- Clipboard Health co-founder Zack Ganieany argues hiring fails at the evaluation layer, where AI-generated resumes battle AI screeners while the actual job to be done gets lost.
- Clipboard Health replaces credential checks with scenario-based work samples designed to reveal how candidates make decisions under pressure, using LLMs to extract signal from open-ended responses.
- Clipboard Health raised $6 million co-led by GMO investors and is building toward paid work trials where candidates demonstrate actual capability before a hiring decision.
Summary
Zack Ganieany, co-founder of Merit First, makes the case that hiring is broken at the evaluation layer, not the process layer. Applicant tracking systems move candidates through funnels efficiently enough. The problem is that the job to be done — find the best person to fill a specific gap — has been buried under a system where AI-generated resumes battle AI screeners, and nobody wins.
Merit First's answer is to replace credentials with work product. Rather than checkbox assessments, the platform is built around scenario-based tests designed to surface where candidates are "spiky" — how they make decisions under pressure, when they double down, when they reverse course. Ganieany argues LLMs are well-suited to extracting signal from open-ended work samples in a way that structured assessments cannot.
Scope and positioning
For now, Merit First is focused on the evaluation layer and explicitly not competing with ATS platforms or LinkedIn. The near-term product is a standardized assessment that functions as a common app — candidates complete it once and can use the output to apply across multiple employers, reducing the friction of putting in work upfront with no guaranteed return.
The longer arc points toward work trials: paid, short-duration engagements where candidates do real work before a hiring decision. Ganieany sees this as the most direct way to compress the gap between what a resume claims and what someone can actually do in the seat.
The agency argument
On the broader job market, Ganieany draws a distinction between a matching problem and an agency problem. Reports of top graduates unable to find work are, in his view, mostly an agency or preference issue. Universities were a reasonable talent proxy before the internet and before AI; they are less so now. Anyone with the drive to self-educate can develop demonstrable skills, and startups — unlike large companies — are generally willing to let them prove it. High-agency candidates can break in. Whether they can high-agency their way into Google is a harder question; Ganieany thinks probably not.
Funding
Merit First has raised a $6 million round co-led by investors including one from GMO. The company is based in Austin.