I had the same thought.

I don't just question the ever-growing list of must-have profiles and time required to maintain them, but their value in general.

It feels like a sort of arms race to engineer and automate hiring.

It's generally agreed that actually sitting down and talking with a person is strongest source of signal [1] in the hiring model, but rather than focusing on that the model is continually stuffed with a growing set of noisy variables (profiles).

At what point does this filtering start identifying the best profile builders as opposed to the best or brightest employees? Does hiring become a full-on game of prep services and checklists of activities along the lines of college admissions?

1: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-b...