Looks Good on Paper

Stop Hiring People You Want to Drink With - Derek Polowyj (Episode 7)

• Andrew Wood (aka Woody), Anita Chauhan • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Derek Polowyj from Eden Scott brings a unique perspective to hiring, having studied recruitment as part of his graduate apprenticeship while working full-time in deep technology recruitment. His academic approach combined with real-world experience recruiting for everything from space tech to AI companies gives him fascinating insights into why traditional hiring keeps failing.

Derek reveals the "red pen exercise" that transforms bloated job descriptions into focused requirements, exposing how most companies haven't actually identified what they need versus what they want. He breaks down the dangerous combination of network bias and affinity bias that's quietly undermining diversity efforts, even in companies that think they're progressive. From one-page CVs to buzzword-filled personal profiles, Derek explains why our current approach to CVs is fundamentally broken.

The conversation takes a powerful turn when Derek shares the story of an overseas engineer whose CV was full of "red flags" but became one of the best hires his client ever made. It's a compelling reminder that the most surprising successes often come from candidates who don't look good on paper but have incredible stories to tell when given the chance.

Resources Mentioned

  • Derek Polowyj: https://linkedin.com/in/derek-polowyj - Recruitment specialist at Eden Scott focusing on deep technologies sector
  • Eden Scott: https://edenscott.com - Scotland's largest independent recruitment agency operating across 12+ sectors including renewable energy, deep tech, and professional services

Show Resources

Welcome to Looks Good on Paper, the podcast that's flipping the script on traditional hiring. We're your hosts. I'm Woody. And I'm Anita. And in each episode we dive into why CVS and the so-called perfect candidate can be misleading. We'll be speaking with industry experts to uncover how skills, potential, and real world experience should be the focus when making hiring decisions. We are here to challenge the norm and rewrite the rules of hiring. So let's get started. welcome everybody to this episode of Looks Good on Paper where we challenge the status quo. And this week I'm delighted to, uh, invite or have. Derek Polowyj from Eden Scott, join us on the podcast. Uh, just in the preamble before you see this, he admitted to studying recruitment, which, um, isn't, uh, something that you hear very often. So during his dissertation it was about, human capital and I'm super excited, um, to have you on the podcast, Derek. Really, looking forward to, you know, understanding what your maybe unique perspective is on our three questions. And I'm gonna hand over to you to do a bit of introduction. It'd be great for our audience just to get to know you a little bit, what you do at Eden Scott, maybe just give us a little insight into the amazing world of Eden scott, um, I'm sure anybody in Edinburgh knows who you are. Um, but outside of, uh, Glasgow, Scotland, et cetera, maybe on Anita's side of the pond, they probably don't know Eden Scott quite as well. So it'd be awesome to get, uh, a very quick overview of that too. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on. Really glad to be here. so yeah, interesting, coming onto this podcast specifically because I'm, I think I'm somebody that on paper probably does come across a little bit differently. so I. Just to touch on the point that you made, I entered the world of work, just after high school. I had a couple of offers to go to university, decided after a bit of an early life crisis that that wasn't the right path for me. and, uh, yeah, I was all of a sudden stuck there with, no real direction going forward. I heard of this program called The Modern Apprenticeship, which allowed you to work full-time and study part-time. Which sounded like a bit of me, I could earn money while still getting my qualifications. jumped into that head first. Eden Scott came knocking. I heard of this wonderful opportunity to work in the world of deep technologies, which is everything from lasers to space, to other companies doing weird and wacky things with ai. And I thought that was a bit of me, again, despite having no background. and around the same time, I also heard of this thing called the Graduate apprenticeship Scheme, which would allow me to get a degree bachelor's, in four years, while working full time. I would work for four days and then on a Friday I would be released to go and study. And it was this fantastic blend because I was able to look at the theory of things on a Friday, and then on the Monday morning I would go and apply it at work. And that was how I was able to get this really rich understanding of not just what the academia says, but how it's applied in real world. And naturally, because I work in the world of recruitment, all of that tended to be around, like you said, human capital and other human resources related activities. That was instrumental. and I couldn't have done it without the help of Eden Scott. So we are, Scotland's largest independent recruit agency. Last time I checked, we've been going for over 20 years now and we operate across, more than a dozen different sectors. Everything from, Renewable energy through to deep technologies, through to professional services like accountancy and finance. we have, roots right across the uk although our three offices are based here in Scotland. So we tend to do quite a lot, of our work here. and. I think the main thing about us is that we are entirely relationship led. We're still owned by our three founding partners who themselves, were from quite an entrepreneurial background. So we understand the challenges of growing a business, the challenges of attracting the right talent and what it takes to really support, growth at scale as well. And, we've made our mission to do that for the last, uh, 20 or so years. And I think we've done a pretty good job so far. Amazing. Thanks Derek. Thanks for the introduction. One. One of the things I absolutely love about Scottish business, other than obviously the fact that Willow comes from Scotland is, the amount of space tech you've got, like Alba Orbital, crucial, big shout out to, uh, Alan Canon over at K Crucial who. I know fairly well. We went on an awesome founder's retreat, so Deep Tech in Scotland is actually quite a, it's quite a buzzing industry really, isn't it? Scotland generally speaking has this rich history of pioneering new technologies. we do a fantastic job of, you know, not just. Making and launching things that go into space, but actually then processing the data that comes from these satellites as well. stopping poaching activities through to tracking climate change all done here in our tiny little, uh, slice of the world. super proud to not be, not just be born and raised here, but, really help that ecosystem thrive as well. as you know, we're gonna launch into our three standard questions, and then Anita is gonna squirrel away in the background and think of a wild card question. Um. Which, hopefully you haven't prepared for. the first of our questions is really about hiring mistakes. So what's the biggest hiring mistake? That, and you'll have an amazing view of this, I'm sure Derek, 'cause you'll work with lots of different companies making. Probably similar mistakes, um, but what's the biggest sort of hiring mistake that companies keep making even though like from the outside looking in, it is clearly not working. Yeah, of course. Um, I think the main thing, and this is a bit of a a, a broad thing, but I will narrow in on it, is a lack of understanding about what they need and how to go about getting it. so usually when I speak to founders, or hiring managers in general about a role, they'll come to me with this job description and It's probably the same as most of the job descriptions you've seen in your life. It's this sort of long scroll of different, uh, keywords and items that they've scraped together. and that's what they threw up out there onto job boards. that's what they position in front of candidates and they come to me saying, Hey, it's been up for three weeks. It's been up for two months, and I've not had anything back. and I think this boils down to a couple of key points. First of all, it's alignment on what they actually need. Now, often they haven't conducted, skills analysis. They haven't worked out, the kind of person that they're looking to, fill Ultimately, this might be based on the last person that left, who perhaps joined the business five years ago. And actually, what the business needs isn't just somebody that replicates their skills. It's something, entirely different. so the first thing for us and how we go about approaching that is something I like to call the red pen exercise. So we'll sit down with a hiring manager online or in person with a copy of the job description and go, okay, you've asked for somebody that has 10 years of experience. What if I could find somebody that would fulfill all the other criteria, but had 9 years of experience, would you still consider them? And then they go, yeah, of course. We draw a red line through that then because 10 years obviously isn't entirely important, and when you go through this point by point, what you actually boil down with is rather than 10, maybe 3 or 4 really key non-negotiables. And then everything else is desirable here. And in fact, had they interviewed the other managers in the business, the other key stakeholders here, what they probably would've found is that they came to that conclusion a lot earlier. that's the main issue I find people having. And then what they tend to do is they take this job description, as I said, and they post it out there online. job descriptions are boring, right? They're these legal documents that we have to fulfill, um, that are mainly used for internal use. I think that's another real misconception that a lot of hiring managers have. they forget that. They're not just positioning themselves intently, but they're positioning themselves to the world as well. You know, if you're stable in a job, you're a high performer, you're doing well, you've got job security, why are you gonna leave your position of stability and comfort to join this business? I liken it to walking into the shops. if all of the, uh, chocolate bars on the shelf had. their label's reversed. So you're looking at the key ingredients list. it'll tell you a lot about that chocolate bar, but are you gonna be enticed to buy it? Probably not. You know, you want the story, you want the, appealing visuals, the large branding in your face shouting, Hey, come pick me up. And this is the same thing that a lot of hiring managers should do. They need to remember that they're positioning themselves to future employees and really doing a good job of condensing themselves. Coming forward, the job description comes further down that process. Second question. what's maybe like a hidden bias that companies are unknowingly, uh, keeping in their process, even though they're sat there going, oh, we've got wonderful DEI practice. we're very progressive as a business, but actually there's something underlying as an unconscious bias or maybe even a conscious one. And, uh, you see time and time again, still sneak into their process. Yeah, there's actually a really interesting one that I've seen a lot more prevalent recently, and I think it's two key biases rolled into one. it's called the network bias, first of all. and a lot of markets exist in an arena where it's really hard to find good talent. And tapping into your personal network, your employee's personal networks, is always gonna be a great source of people. we can, find people that we've worked with in the past, people that we would recommend, I think the challenge comes when you're embedding these people into a process that's already ongoing. we probably find the propensity to gravitate towards these candidates a bit more. we're more likely to, want to streamline people through the process that we know and that we've worked with in the past, but they might not necessarily be the best hire. there's a loss of objectivity there. And I guess that brings me into the second, bias I see very, very commonly, which is affinity bias. we tend to gravitate towards people that are more like us. often I've heard hiring managers say, you know, I want somebody that I could, uh, sit down and have a pint with in the pub. And I do think there's some value in there in getting along with your colleagues and having those shared experiences as well. But actually when we have a look at research, we tend to find that diverse teams are often the best performing. And it's not just diversity in terms of background, it's in terms of thought, it's in terms of learned experience and, uh, skills and traits as well. And although. The person that went to the same university as you, or the person who shares the same love for football as you might be great to sit down and have a pipe with, they perhaps won't be the best next hire that you get as well. and I tend to find that these two, biases, are quite closely into light. And I can see that's how infinity bias, finds its way unconsciously into the, uh, hiring process as well through those networks. The real, Dichotomy is that a hiring manager should want to go for a pint or a pint of coke or a pint of beer, whatever your tipple with whoever is right for the job. Because actually it would be an interesting enough conversation just about work regardless, like wanting to just socialize with people outside of work it's a bit of a bygone era really. Uh, unless, That's your culture as a business you're not really hiring. For skill, you are hiring for cultural fit. And I've talked about cultural fit in the past. Cultural fit can be a culture ad, it can be, you know, valuable within a business, but also if you are just hiring based on cultural fit, you can also like weaponize that to a point of going, everybody's gonna look and sound like me. Otherwise, they don't fit in our culture of our business. the challenge should be hire somebody that is so different to you, but has the right skills that it means. It's super interesting to sit down for a pint with them after work and just find out more about that person. we tend to find that good salespeople, they usually have a gift of the gab. You know, they're great chat. Um, they're good at at woo people and getting them on sides, but actually being able to. Sort of strip that away and not just say, okay, how much do we like them as a person? what value can they bring to the business? What kinds of different perspectives? What's their achievement like? And I, I think it's really easy and, you know, I'm not blaming anybody here. It's super easy to get caught up in having a great conversation with somebody, but sometimes too unstructured of a process. Um, or not asking the difficult and tricky questions upfront. We can almost sort of be blindsided by somebody's personality and we tend to gravitate to who is the easiest to talk to, rather than who's the best for that specific role. final question before Anita's wild card. Uh, so I hope you're ready for that one. What's the most surprising hire or placement I should say, maybe that you've ever made, and how did their success defy what looks good on paper? Yeah, this is a really interesting one actually. so while I was conducting some of my university research for my dissertation project, I met this fantastic engineer, um, who had recently come to the UK from overseas. He was sort of locked into a role that he was very unhappy with, that he felt was below where his expectations are for his career, for the experience that he'd already gained. but he was finding it really hard to get another role here. you know, the perception he was facing as well is that, certain biases related to his background, to the country he had came from as well. Employers were really quickly to judge whether or not he had further requirements like visa sponsorship as well. And I think that had almost manifested itself in him, almost undervaluing himself. And that sort of reflected in the CV that he had as well. he had had a couple of short stints. he'd had some gaps in his resume as well, but actually when you sat down with him and you spoke to him and he was able to articulate himself, talk through his experience and his skills, and share some stories. He was fantastic. It completely blew me away. sort of made it my mission really to help him get that next role. And I think, like you said on paper, all of the key sort of red flags that you might hear people ranting on LinkedIn about were there, you know, like I said, a couple shorter stints. but ultimately we were able to, help him articulate himself, help him to tell his story, to make his personality shang through, which is such an important trait. In the modern age of ai, large language models as well, who do a great job of sort of, making everything sound bland, actually being able to get his voice through that as well was fantastic. he landed a couple of interviews, and as soon as hiring manager saw the same thing that I saw, he was very quickly in demand. glad to see that we managed to help him get a role. he's now doing in fantastically well, he's on a great progression pathway and when I picked up with the hiring manager a couple of months later, he said he was, uh, one of the best hires that made that year which just, you know, completely made my day as well. So, I think it goes back to my previous point that sometimes the people that look. Fantastic on paper who perform fantastically in interviews, aren't always the best people for the role. And, being able to cut through that noise and, really go beyond, just a sort of 15 second scan and actually meet the person behind the papers. Such an important exercise, and it's something that we don't do enough as recruiters. I'll hold hand up. First of all, you know, it's really easy to jump to these mental shortcuts, these heuristics. but taking the time to understand the person behind that can be so valuable and actually can lead to some of the best placements you ever get. right because we're, they're humans behind that paper, right? We forget that they're humans with experiences in life's like, like passions. And that's the most exciting thing about meeting these people. Alright, so ready for your wild card question. Game face on. If you could ban one thing from CVS forever, what would it be? Oh, ban one thing from CVS forever. the first thing is a stylistic choice. One page cvs. I. And it goes back to the previous point that we just said, and it, it kinda contravenes a lot of the advice we got on LinkedIn as well, right? Which is they need to be these extremely short, snappy, visually appealing, packed with color and sliders. I completely disagree. I think that what you end up doing is, is trying to condense your information. You experience so much that you go the opposite way. You don't tell a story, you don't articulate yourselves well. when you have to condense, especially. Candidates who have, you know, one or two decades worth of experience in a particular field. I see them trying to condense their skill summary into like three or four bullet points, and I just don't think it works. again, I can understand the, dichotomy that you've got to do there. And I'm not advocating for 15 or 16 pages CDs by any means, but I'd much rather see two or three pages. It really goes into you as a professional, your background, your experience, what makes you tick, what projects you've delivered than this sort of bland, visually appealing one pager. I think another thing that we need to ban from cvs, in addition to that as well, are these, really sort of, generalized personal profiles that I see as well. I just don't think they add much value. And, and what I mean by that, in case anybody doesn't, know what I'm referring to, we sort of see this introductory paragraph or two, which is just packed with meaningless buzzwords. Like I'm a proactive people centered engineer. Yes. Yeah. and also dynamic and yeah, it's And insert any objective that can make you sound fantastic. I like to see them more so as an opportunity for your elevator pitch. And I delivered a, a workshop to students fairly recently, which said the exact same thing, rather than just sort of filling out this litany of different buzzwords, add aren't gonna add value to the reader nor anyone else, use it to tell a bit of a story. I studied X because I was, enthused and, entirely found a subject, to be passionate to me when I. Met somebody in high school that then took me on this journey. I've since launched three satellites into orbit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's a much better, much more captivating story and really sets up your CV for, a lot more success to come rather than these sort of bland, uh, AI turned, introductory paragraphs. They don't really do anything at all. just to challenge that back. My only fear of that, and I totally agree, right, like it's the most wasted bit of space ever. Because it is, I'm dynamic, I'm organized. You know, it's like, what's, what, what words can I put in here? The thing that I find maybe would be difficult is a lot of applicants, they aren't applying to people like yourself, Derek. They're applying directly through ATSs that are scanning for keywords like, um, detail orientated organizers, and then they score you out of 10 based on having those random buzzwords in, and it can't actually assimilate an amazing story. Like that. which is why, you know, I guess what you are saying is get more of your story on paper. What I would say is, and I I appreciate Anita asked you, what would you get rid of on the cv? I'd just get rid of the CV altogether and allow people to tell better stories. Right. Absolutely. Um, that's the point. the reality is that cvs, as long, as, long as they stay as they are, they're always gonna be self edited. They're always gonna be, you know, a collection of random words to get through an a TS. What I, what I love is your idea of. Just how can we turn and evolve this piece of paper or this application into the story of somebody's actual life as opposed to how you say, just what you think you should write on one page to get through, and scarily enough people that put two pages, half of the second page is all blanked out in white font, so they get through ATSs anyway. It's ridiculous. there's so many amazing things that people do. Just to get through that. Thank you so much for coming on Derek. Appreciate. you joining us on the podcast this week. thanks. Pleasure. Thanks so much, Derek. Really love the conversation. See you all Not at all. Yeah. Thanks guys. See you later. So thanks for tuning in to Looks Good on Paper. We hope today's conversation helps you rethink what really matters when it comes to hiring. Don't forget to subscribe, share with your network, and stay tuned for more insightful discussions that are shaking up the entire hiring process. Catch us next time as we continue to challenge the status quo. Until then, remember, it's not what looks good on paper, it's what they can do.

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Andrew Wood (aka Woody)

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