ResumeAdapter
Updated 2026-06-09

Netflix hires for the Dream Team.
Your resume has to pass the keeper test.

Why this matters

Netflix publishes its standard openly. The June 2024 Culture Memo names four principles, eight Dream Team values, selflessness, judgment, candor, creativity, courage, inclusion, curiosity, and resilience, and the keeper test: would your manager fight to keep you. This page maps each to resume language so the answer reads yes.

Scan my Netflix resumeFree to scanNetflix careersValue coverage
By the numbers
Core principles
4
Dream Team, people over process, and two more
Dream Team values
8
Judgment and candor read first
The test
Keeper test
Would a manager fight to keep you
Source
June 2024
Netflix Culture Memo

The quick answer

What does Netflix's culture memo want on your resume?

Netflix's June 2024 Culture Memo, titled The Best Work of Our Lives, sets the standard it hires against: four principles (the Dream Team, people over process, uncomfortably exciting, and great and always better), eight Dream Team values (selflessness, judgment, candor, creativity, courage, inclusion, curiosity, and resilience), and the keeper test, the question of whether a manager would fight to keep you. Translated to resume language, that means leading every bullet with a quantified, personally-owned outcome that maps to judgment, candor, selflessness, or courage, so a manager reading it would answer yes to the keeper test. Avoid responsibility-list bullets that read as adequate; they give a manager no reason to fight to keep you. The fastest way to see which of your bullets already pass and which read as a list is to scan your resume. Scan your Netflix resume.

Netflix publishes its culture standard openly as the Culture Memo, titled The Best Work of Our Lives, last updated June 2024. The memo states the four principles, the eight Dream Team values, and the keeper test that managers apply to every person on their team. This page maps that published rubric to resume language so a candidate can show the same signal Netflix says it hires for.

Netflix's Culture Memo is not aspirational copy. It is the published standard the company hires and stays staffed against. Its four principles, the Dream Team, people over process, uncomfortably exciting, and great and always better, set the frame, and underneath them sit the eight Dream Team values that describe how Netflix wants people to actually work.

The values are concrete. Judgment is using data to inform intuition and choosing long-term solutions over short-term fixes. Candor is admitting mistakes openly and sharing learnings widely. Selflessness is seeking what is best for Netflix, not yourself or your team. Each is a behavior a hiring manager can read in an outcome, or fail to read in an adjective.

Above all of it sits the keeper test. Netflix managers ask, of each person, whether they would fight to keep them, and whether, knowing everything they know today, they would hire them again. Netflix pairs this with a professional sports team, not a family framing, where performance outweighs tenure and unconditional loyalty.

The resume reading is the same for every value: a Netflix manager wants the value visible in the outcome, not asserted as an adjective. A line that reads responsible for delivering results fails, because it proves the role was held, not that anyone would fight to keep you. The eight rows below give you the proof pattern and the anti-pattern for each value.

The four principles, the top-level frame

Four principles sit above the values.
The Dream Team is the first one.

These four principles open the June 2024 Culture Memo and set the context for the eight Dream Team values below. People over process is the current name for what Netflix once framed as freedom and responsibility; the descriptions here are verbatim from the memo.

01
The Dream Team

We aim only to have high performers at Netflix, people who are great at what they do, and even better at working together.

02
People over Process

You get better outcomes when employees have the information and freedom to make decisions for themselves. We hire unusually responsible people who thrive on this openness and freedom.

03
Uncomfortably Exciting

To entertain the world, we need to be bold and ambitious. That means embracing the thrill of what's next, even when it's uncomfortable.

04
Great and Always Better

We often say Netflix sucks today compared to where we can be tomorrow. We need the self-awareness to understand what should be better, and the discipline and resilience to get there.

Principle names and descriptions verbatim from the Netflix Culture Memo, jobs.netflix.com/culture. Last updated June 2024. Accessed 2026-06-09.

The eight Dream Team values, deep-dived

Every value with the Netflix description,
a do-this bullet, and the anti-pattern.

These eight values are the Dream Team rubric stated in the June 2024 Culture Memo, each description verbatim. The do-this and avoid-this lines are ResumeAdapter's resume translation, built to read as a keeper-test yes.

01
Dream Team value 01

Selflessness

You are humble when searching for the best ideas; you seek what's best for Netflix, not yourself or your team; you take time to help others succeed.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Credit the team outcome you helped unblock, then your specific role in it. Show a result you advanced for the wider org, not just your own scope.

Unblocked a sister team's launch by handing over a caching pattern I had built, cutting their integration time from 3 weeks to 4 days and freeing my own roadmap by 1 sprint.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Lone-hero framing that claims sole credit. It reads against the value and tells a manager you optimize for yourself, not the Dream Team.

Single-handedly owned every decision and personally drove all results across the entire program.

02
Dream Team value 02

Judgment

You look beyond short term fixes in favor of long term solutions; you make wise decisions despite ambiguity; you use data to inform your intuition.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a decision you made under ambiguity, the data you used, and the long-term outcome it protected. Name the short-term fix you rejected.

Chose to re-architect the billing queue rather than patch it, using a 90-day error trend to justify the call; cut payment-failure incidents 71% over the next 2 quarters.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Responsibility-list bullets with no decision and no result. A manager cannot read judgment from a list of duties.

Responsible for making decisions and managing priorities across multiple workstreams.

03
Dream Team value 03

Candor

You willingly receive and give feedback; you are open about what's working and what needs to improve; you admit mistakes openly and share learnings widely.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a moment you named a problem honestly, including one that reflected on your own work, and the improvement that followed. Real numbers, including the misses.

Flagged that my own dashboard had overstated retention by 6 points, corrected the metric, and rebuilt the reporting so 4 teams stopped planning against a bad number.

Avoid this anti-pattern

A resume where nothing ever went wrong. Curated perfection reads as the opposite of candor; a manager gets no signal you report honestly when it is uncomfortable.

Consistently delivered flawless results and exceeded every target across all projects without exception.

04
Dream Team value 04

Creativity

You welcome new ideas; you are passionate and persistent in pursuit of more innovative solutions; you value artistic expression.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a non-obvious solution you pursued and the result. Name what you tried, what you reasoned from, and the outcome, not the adjective.

Replaced a manual QA pass with a generated test harness no one had proposed, cutting release-blocking bugs 40% and reclaiming 2 engineer-days per cycle.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Calling yourself creative or innovative with nothing built behind it. The adjective with no idea, no attempt, and no result reads as a claim, not creativity.

Creative, innovative thinker who brings fresh ideas and thinks outside the box on every project.

05
Dream Team value 05

Courage

You are vulnerable in search for the truth; you are willing to risk failure, or challenge the status quo, in the pursuit of excellence.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a status quo you challenged or a risk you took toward a better outcome. Name the position you held, who pushed back, and what it produced.

Argued to kill a feature 3 teams had shipped against, held the position through 2 review cycles, and the deprecation cut support load 22% with no revenue loss.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Bullets that only describe safe, expected work. A manager reads no courage from a resume where you never challenged anything.

Followed established processes and delivered assigned tasks on schedule throughout my tenure.

06
Dream Team value 06

Inclusion

You recognize your biases and work to counteract them; you try to ensure everyone at Netflix can do their best work, whatever their culture, identity or background.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a concrete thing you did so others could do their best work: a process you opened up, an access barrier you removed, a perspective you brought in. Name the effect.

Rewrote our on-call docs and ran a buddy rotation so 4 new hires from non-traditional backgrounds shipped to production in week 1 instead of week 4.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Tagline inclusion with no action and no effect. Champion of belonging is a phrase, not an artifact a manager can audit.

Champion of an inclusive culture who fosters belonging across diverse teams.

07
Dream Team value 07

Curiosity

You learn rapidly and eagerly; you are more interested in other people's ideas than your own; you're humble about what you don't yet know.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Anchor to a concrete learning outcome: a domain you did not own six months ago that you own now, a stack you shipped against, a question you chased to a result.

Moved from frontend to owning a streaming-telemetry service in 90 days, shipping 5 production changes on a stack I had never touched, by pairing weekly with the prior owner.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Continuous learner, curious problem-solver, growth mindset. None names a domain, a date, or an outcome; they read as filler to a manager.

Continuous learner with a growth mindset and a passion for staying current with new technologies.

08
Dream Team value 08

Resilience

You quickly adapt to changing circumstances; you make tough decisions without agonizing or long delay; you embrace a hard challenge.

Netflix's description
Do this on the resume

Show a hard challenge you took on or a fast tough call you made under changing conditions, and the result you held to. Name the pace.

When a vendor outage broke our pipeline mid-launch, cut over to a fallback path within 6 hours and held the ship date, recovering 99.9% of delayed jobs by end of day.

Avoid this anti-pattern

A hard worker who thrives under pressure with no tough call and no shipped result. It describes a preference, not a delivery.

Hard-working professional who thrives in fast-paced, high-pressure environments.

Value names and descriptions verbatim from the Netflix Culture Memo, The Best Work of Our Lives, jobs.netflix.com/culture. Last updated June 2024. Accessed 2026-06-09.

The keeper test

The bar above all eight values.
Would a manager fight to keep you.

Underneath the values is one question Netflix managers apply to every person on their team: if X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them, and knowing everything I know today, would I hire X again. If the answer is no, Netflix says it is fairer to everyone to part ways quickly. The keeper-test name came from co-founder Reed Hastings, who recalled catching a fish as a child and his dad saying, that's a keeper, Reed.

The two keeper-test questions a manager asks:

01
Would I fight to keep them?
If this person wanted to leave, would the manager work to retain them, or accept it.
02
Would I hire them again?
Knowing everything the manager knows today, would they make the same hire.

Keeper-test wording paraphrased from the Netflix Culture Memo. Accessed 2026-06-09.

How the keeper test maps to a resume

Every bullet is a keeper-test answer.

The keeper test gives the resume a single test to pass: would a hiring manager, reading this bullet, answer yes, I would fight to keep them. That means proof you are a top performer, not just that you held the role. A bullet that names a quantified, personally-owned outcome passes; a responsibility list that reads as adequate fails, because adequate is exactly what the keeper test is built to remove.

Netflix frames its Dream Team as a professional sports team, not a family, driven by performance, not seniority, tenure, or unconditional loyalty. The supporting concepts on the live page, context not control, highly aligned and loosely coupled, disagree and commit, farming for dissent, and the informed captain who owns the call, all point the same way: a manager gives you context and clarity, and trusts you to make and own the decision. On a resume, that reads as ownership and judgment shown through outcomes you personally drove.

State it plainly: lead with judgment and candor, the two values that read fastest as senior signal, then layer selflessness and courage. Four bullets, four values, each a quantified result a manager would fight to keep. That is what the keeper test asks of a Netflix resume.

For every candidate the move is the same: write the resume to the eight Dream Team values as evidence. A judgment bullet makes a long-term call under ambiguity using data, a candor bullet names a problem honestly including your own miss, a selflessness bullet advances a result for the wider org, and a courage bullet challenges a status quo. None of them name the value as an adjective.

The keeper test is the thread through all of them: each bullet should be a concrete, quantified, personally-owned result, so a manager reading it would fight to keep you. That is what Netflix means by the Dream Team, and it is what survives the ongoing keeper-test question rather than just clearing the initial hire.

You do not need to name a single value on the page. You need bullets where judgment, candor, selflessness, and courage are visible in the outcomes. See the Netflix levels spoke for how the bar shifts by band, and the Netflix interview process spoke for how the loop probes the same values.

FAQ

Netflix culture and keeper test FAQ

The questions candidates surface specifically about Netflix's culture values and the keeper test, after they have read the pillar. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD, because AI engines that extract HTML and AI engines that extract JSON-LD should not see different text.

What is the keeper test at Netflix?

The keeper test is the question Netflix managers apply to every person on their team: if X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them, and knowing everything I know today, would I hire X again. If the answer is no, Netflix believes it is fairer to everyone to part ways quickly. The name came from co-founder Reed Hastings, who recalled catching a fish as a child and his dad saying that's a keeper, Reed. On a resume, the keeper test means every bullet should give a hiring manager a reason to answer yes, I would fight to keep them, which is proof you are a top performer, not just that you held the role.

What are Netflix's culture values?

Netflix's June 2024 Culture Memo names eight Dream Team values: selflessness, judgment, candor, creativity, courage, inclusion, curiosity, and resilience. They sit under four broader principles, the Dream Team, people over process, uncomfortably exciting, and great and always better. The values describe how Netflix wants people to work together: humble about ideas, using data to inform intuition, open with feedback, willing to challenge the status quo, and quick to adapt. On a resume, each value is best shown as a quantified outcome rather than asserted as an adjective.

Does Netflix still use the culture deck?

Yes, in evolved form. The famous Netflix culture slide deck from 2009 grew into the published Culture Memo, titled The Best Work of Our Lives, last updated June 2024 and hosted at jobs.netflix.com/culture. The current memo states the four principles, the eight Dream Team values, and the keeper test. The legacy nine-value deck, which listed things like communication, passion, innovation, integrity, and impact, is no longer the current framework, so plan your resume against the June 2024 values, not the old deck.

Is the Netflix keeper test controversial?

It is debated. Critics describe the keeper test as demanding because it asks managers to consider, on an ongoing basis, whether they would fight to keep each person, and Netflix pairs it with a professional sports team, not a family framing where performance outweighs tenure and unconditional loyalty. For a candidate, the practical reading is simpler: a resume should prove top-performer impact, so a manager's instinct is to keep you. Lead with quantified, personally-owned results that map to the Dream Team values rather than a list of responsibilities.

What does Netflix mean by the Dream Team?

The Dream Team is Netflix's idea that it aims only to have high performers, people who are great at what they do and even better at working together. Netflix frames it as a professional sports team, not a family, where the team is driven by performance, not seniority, tenure, or unconditional loyalty. Supporting concepts include context not control, where managers give context and clarity instead of controlling decisions, and highly aligned and loosely coupled. On a resume, Dream Team fit means showing both individual excellence and that you make the people around you better.

How do I show Netflix culture fit on my resume?

Map quantified bullets to the eight Dream Team values and lead with judgment and candor, the two values that read fastest as senior signal. Each bullet should pair a value with a personally-owned, quantified result: a decision you made under ambiguity using data (judgment), a problem you named honestly including your own miss (candor), a result you advanced for the wider org (selflessness), a status quo you challenged (courage). Avoid responsibility-list bullets that read as adequate. The test is whether a manager, reading the bullet, would answer yes to the keeper test.

Continue

The rest of the Netflix
resume cluster.

01 / Pillar

How to get a job at Netflix

The full pillar: the hiring bar, the four principles and eight Dream Team values in summary, the levels, and the interview loop.

Read
02 / Spoke

Netflix levels

The Netflix ladder with comp structure and how the keeper-test bar shifts by band and scope.

Read
03 / Spoke

The Netflix interview process

The loop stage by stage and how it probes the same Dream Team values and keeper-test signal.

Read
04 / Resume example

Software engineer resume

A worked engineering resume with quantified, personally-owned bullets, the structure the Dream Team values reward.

Read
Related

ATS Statistics

The dataset behind the editorial findings on this page, including the median pre-edit resume score.

Read
Related

All company guides

The full index of company resume hubs, each mapping a hiring bar to resume language.

Read
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