Looks Good on Paper
Looks Good on Paper flips hiring on its head. Hosted by Andrew Wood and Anita Chauhan, we dive into why CVs and "perfect fits" are overrated. Through fun, insightful conversations with industry experts, we explore how skills, potential, and real experience should be the focus of hiring... not what looks good on paper.
Quick, candid, and packed with actionable insights, we’re here to rewrite the rules of hiring, one episode at a time.
Looks Good on Paper
Stop Hiring Your Mirror: Culture Add vs. Culture Fit
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Culture fit is one of the most expensive myths in hiring. When companies screen for fit, they tend to screen for sameness — people who think, communicate, and look like the people already in the room. The result is a team that gets along well and runs out of new ideas fast.
Culture add is the alternative. The idea is straightforward: hire for the perspectives, skills, and approaches your team is actually missing, not the ones it already has. In practice, most companies claim to do this and revert to fit the moment the pressure is on.
Kree Govender from Microsoft Canada has spent years working on what inclusive hiring actually looks like inside one of the world's most recognizable employers. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, she breaks down the real difference between culture fit and culture add, why affinity bias is so hard to catch in the moment, and what a talent acquisition process designed around genuine diversity of thought looks like in practice.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- How to define culture add in a way your hiring team can actually use
- The three places in the hiring process where culture fit bias most often shows up
- The structured approach Microsoft Canada uses to move from intention to consistent outcome
Guest:
Kree Govender — Microsoft Canada
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kree-govender-12b2651b/
Host: Anita Chauhan
Culture add means hiring for what your team is missing, not what it already has. Culture fit screens for sameness; culture add screens for contribution. The distinction matters because companies that optimize for fit tend to build teams that agree well and innovate poorly.
─── FOLLOW & CONNECT ───
If this changed how you think about hiring, follow the show — we're one episode per week.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ps7QTMrESqA
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1625835562
Try Willo — video interviewing for skills-based hiring: https://www.willo.video/looks-good-on-paper
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10170893
RELATED TOPICS
Skills-based hiring, diversity and inclusion in recruitment, bias-free hiring, talent acquisition strategy, future of work
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
