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
Why Hiring More People Is the Wrong Fix (And What High-Growth Companies Do Instead) (S2E12)
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Headcount is not a growth strategy. But in high-pressure, high-growth environments, adding people feels like the most immediate lever — and it gets pulled too early, too often, and without enough clarity about what problem it's actually solving.
The companies that scale well don't just hire more. They hire differently. They have a clearer picture of what they're optimising for before they open a role, and they treat team design as a strategic question rather than a reactive one.
Mike Bettley, Senior Director of Talent at StackAdapt — one of Canada's most recognised high-growth adtech companies — has built and scaled hiring functions that have to perform under real pressure. In this episode of Looks Good on Paper, he breaks down what separates companies that scale cleanly from companies that bloat and stall, how to know when adding headcount will help versus when it will make things worse, and what a mature workforce planning process looks like before you're already in crisis mode.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
- The signals that tell you it's time to hire versus time to optimise
- How high-growth companies think about team design before opening a role
- The headcount planning practices that prevent over-hiring cycles
Guest:
Mike Bettley — Senior Director of Talent, StackAdapt
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelbettley/
Hosts: Anita Chauhan
High-growth companies that scale well treat headcount as a last resort, not a first response. Before opening a role, they ask what outcome the hire is meant to produce and whether that outcome can be achieved by redesigning how existing capacity is deployed. Companies that skip this question tend to over-hire, bloat their org, and face painful corrections 12 to 18 months later.
─── 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/SO5y6HAasME
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
Talent acquisition strategy, workforce planning, scaling teams, skills-based hiring, high-growth startups, future of work, HR strategy
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
