I've been working with data science teams for nearly a decade, and I'm increasingly convinced that a polished portfolio full of Kaggle projects does more harm than good for landing a job. Recruiters and hiring managers I talk to rarely look past the first few entries, and they've told me they're tired of seeing the same Titanic or house price predictions. Real business experience, even from a small internship, shows you can handle messy data and vague stakeholder requests, which is what the actual job entails. Should we stop judging candidates primarily on their portfolio and focus more on how they think through a live problem during the interview?