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
Don’t Trust the First 10%: Process Is the Problem, Says Ashby’s Jim Miller (S2E8)
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The first 10% of most hiring processes produces almost no useful signal about whether a candidate can do the job. Resume screens sort for credentials. Referral filters sort for network proximity. Initial calls sort for presentation confidence. None of these reliably predict performance.
The result is a process that feels rigorous because it has many steps, but is actually optimised to reproduce whoever you already have.
Jim Miller, VP of People and Talent at Ashby — one of the most respected recruiting platforms in the market — has built hiring systems at companies across every stage of growth. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, he breaks down why most hiring processes fail even when teams are trying hard, how over-reliance on employee referrals quietly narrows your talent pool, and what a genuinely structured interview process looks like versus what most companies think they're running.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- The three most common places process bias enters a hiring funnel
- Why structured interviews consistently outperform unstructured ones
- How to audit your own hiring process for signals that actually predict performance
Guest:
Jim Miller — VP of People & Talent, Ashby
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm/
Host: Anita Chauhan
Structured interviews outperform unstructured ones because they evaluate every candidate against the same criteria, in the same order, with the same questions. Unstructured interviews optimise for how comfortable the interviewer feels — which is a measure of similarity, not capability.
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If this changed how you think about hiring, follow the show — we're one episode per week.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/aQ8w2CmaCko
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
Structured hiring, talent acquisition strategy, skills-based hiring, reducing bias in recruitment, AI in HR, 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
