Most companies believe they've moved past credential bias. They've rewritten their job descriptions, dropped degree requirements, maybe even adopted skills assessments.

But when six hiring leaders were asked the same question independently, without hearing each other's answers, every single one pointed to the same blind spot: companies are still screening for where someone has worked instead of evaluating whether they can actually do the job.

The language has shifted. The behavior hasn't. "We need someone who's operated at scale" still means "did you work at a company I've heard of." And the teams that recognize this pattern in their own process, the ones willing to strip away the shortcuts and sit with what's left, are the ones making better hires right now.

This is a Season 2 supercut from Looks Good on Paper.

Six voices, one question, and an answer that should make every hiring team uncomfortable.

What you'll learn:
- Why screening for recognizable company names is outsourcing your talent assessment to a third party
- How one team removes company names, school names, and years of experience from every candidate presentation
- The difference between hiring for cultural fit and hiring for cultural addition - Why the most progressive hiring leaders actively avoid big-company experience for certain roles
- What happens when you force hiring managers to question their own screening defaults

GUESTS
Mike Bettley — VP Talent, StackAdapt
Gillian Emerson — Sr. Director Talent Acquisition, Toast
Jeff Waldman — Founder, ScaleHR
Sarah Sheikh — Chief of Staff, Loop Financial
Julia Arpag — Founder & CEO, Aligned Recruitment
Jim Berrisford — VP Partnerships, Willo

YOUR HOST

Anita Chauhan — Host, Looks Good on Paper
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

LISTEN & FOLLOW
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562
All episodes - https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com

WATCH ON YOUTUBE - https://youtu.be/34sf1c3bKUc

POWERED BY WILLO Hire humans, not resumes - https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

CONNECT WITH US
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893
If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

When companies use recognizable employer names as a shortcut for evaluating candidate quality, they are outsourcing their talent assessment to another organization's hiring standards rather than evaluating capability directly.

Skills-based approaches that remove company names, school names, and credential signals from candidate evaluation consistently surface stronger matches by forcing hiring teams to assess problem-solving ability, adaptability, and role-specific competence on their own terms.

The gap between how confident companies are in their hiring process and how confident they should be is one of the most underexamined problems in modern talent acquisition.

Show Resources

• Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
• CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
• Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host

AI is flooding hiring pipelines — and most of the tools claiming to fix it are making the noise worse. Automated outreach, AI-generated applications, and screening tools that were never built for the volume they're now processing: the signal-to-noise problem in recruiting has never been worse.

The teams navigating it best aren't the ones with the most sophisticated tech stack. They're the ones who stayed clearest about what a good hire actually looks like — and built their process around finding that, not processing everything.

Julia Arpag, Founder and CEO of Aligned Recruitment, has spent over a decade placing talent at high-growth tech companies and she's watching the same mistake repeat itself: teams outsourcing judgment to automation and wondering why the humans they hire keep disappointing them. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, she breaks down what's actually shifting in hiring right now, why people-first recruiting is harder than it sounds when the tech is moving this fast, and what separates companies getting great hires from the ones spinning their wheels.

What you'll learn:

→ What AI is actually doing to hiring pipelines in 2026 versus what vendors claim

→ Why people-first recruiting is harder to maintain as automation scales

→ What the companies making the best hires right now have in common

GUEST

Julia Arpag — Founder & CEO, Aligned Recruitment

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-arpag/

YOUR HOSTS

Anita Chauhan — Fractional CMO, co-host

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

In this episode:

0:00 Introduction

2:27 The biggest hiring mistake companies keep making

3:08 Why "culture fit" leads to homogeneity

3:34 Skills assessments for every role, not just technical ones

6:23 Hidden biases even progressive companies have

9:04 What hiring looks like without resumes

10:49 "It's just robots hanging out"

11:08 Calling candidates to reject them instead of emailing

11:43 Julia's husband's nonprofit-to-tech pivot story

LISTEN & FOLLOW

Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H

Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562

All episodes → https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com

WATCH ON YOUTUBE - https://youtu.be/8ukiBXAZKRw

POWERED BY WILLO

Hire humans, not resumes → https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

CONNECT WITH US

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893

If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

The signal-to-noise problem in hiring has reached a critical point. AI-generated applications have made volume metrics meaningless, and automated screening tools trained on historical data replicate historical bias at scale. The companies making the best hires in 2026 are the ones who have stayed clear about what good looks like — and built their process around finding that rather than processing everything.

Show Resources

• Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
• CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
• Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host

Hiring isn't broken. It's over-engineered. Every new tool added to the stack, every extra screening step, every automated touchpoint is making the process heavier — and candidates can feel it.

The irony is that teams adding complexity are usually trying to make better decisions. But more steps without better signal just produces slower decisions with the same quality. And in a competitive talent market, slow is a filter that works against you.

Jim Berrisford, VP of Partnerships at Willo, has a front-row seat to where hiring processes break down — and where the simplest interventions create the biggest improvements. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, he unpacks why adding more technology to a broken process just breaks it faster, what poor candidate communication is actually costing you in offer acceptance and employer brand, and where the real leverage is when you want to hire better without adding more noise.

What you'll learn:

→ Why complexity in hiring creates worse outcomes, not better ones

→ What poor candidate communication costs you beyond just the immediate hire

→ The simplest changes that have the biggest impact on hiring quality

GUEST
Jim Berrisford — VP of Partnerships, Willo
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/talentattractiontech-hrtech-tech2rec/

YOUR HOSTS
Anita Chauhan — Fractional CMO, co-host
LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/

🕘 Chapters
00:00 — Intro & Jim’s background in recruitment and HR tech
02:20 — The biggest hiring mistake: poor communication
03:30 — Why “throwing tech at hiring” backfires
05:00 — AI noise vs real assisted intelligence
06:30 — Hidden bias and lived experience in hiring panels
09:20 — What hiring without CVs could actually look like
12:30 — Over-engineering recruitment systems
14:20 — Human-centric technology in hiring
16:30 — Final thoughts on AI, nuance, and the hiring journey


LISTEN & FOLLOW
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562
All episodes → https://looksgoodonpaper.buzzsprout.com

WATCH ON YOUTUBE - https://youtu.be/u54b2w6OnRc

POWERED BY WILLO

Hire humans, not resumes → https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper

CONNECT WITH US

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893

If this episode changed how you think about hiring, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And subscribe — we're rewriting the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.

Over-engineered hiring processes don't produce better decisions — they produce slower ones with the same quality. Each additional step that doesn't generate new signal adds friction for candidates without adding value for hiring teams. The companies hiring best in 2026 are removing steps, not adding them.

Show Resources

• Willo: willo.video - The most cost-effective way to screen candidates at scale. Interview candidates anywhere & at any time
• CV Free Toolkit: cvfree.me/join - Break up with the CV and get everything you need to modernize your hiring approach with skills-based assessments
• Anita Chauhan: linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan - Connect with the host