I screened 237 resumes from Stanford and Berkeley. Here's what still separates the best.

I screened 237 resumes from Stanford and Berkeley for one intern role. Almost every one looks great. That's the problem: when everyone looks this strong on paper, the resume stops being a signal. The only thing left to sort on is whether they built something that mattered or something that looked impressive.

Three patterns from those 237 resumes show where this generation of best newgrads is heading — and how to tell the real top talent apart.

1. LLM tooling is the new "I built a web app"

Nearly every strong candidate has shipped something with RAG, fine-tuning, or agentic workflows: LangChain, the OpenAI API, Claude. It's table stakes now, not a differentiator. What separated the standouts was whether the tool became a product — with users, revenue, and downloads — or stayed a hackathon demo with a deck.

2. Founder identity before the first job

These students don't wait for permission. They co-found startups, launch apps with thousands of downloads, run 1,000-person hackathons, and raise $500K+ in sponsorship before they graduate. But there's a split. Some built something with measurable traction. Others "founded" a class project with a landing page. The resume line reads identically. The signal behind it does not.

3. Cross-functional by default

Most strong candidates move fluidly across PM, growth, design, and engineering. They don't pick a lane; they pick whatever the problem needs. Five years ago a CS junior's resume was three internships at progressively bigger companies. Now it's a startup they co-founded, a hackathon they organized, a research project, and a growth or product internship — all before senior year.

The bar isn't just high, it's compressed

We back technical founders at Embedding VC, so this is the pool we recruit from and invest in. Everyone looks strong on paper, which is why the only question that still separates them is whether they built something that mattered or something that looked impressive.

This is the same judgment we bring to Base to Base Recruiting: we help venture-backed founders find builders with real signal — not just polished resumes — and reach candidates they couldn't reach alone.