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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
It's Just Robots Hanging Out: What's Actually Happening in Hiring Right Now
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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
