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
A Candidate on My Call Was Impersonating a Dead Person
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Deepfakes in hiring interviews are real. A recruiter at Xero shares the story of a candidate who impersonated a deceased person on a video call, and explains how his team catches fake profiles, eliminates culture fit bias, and reviews every single applicant without using AI to screen anyone out.
Nit Karuna is a Principal AI/ML Recruiter at Xero with over a decade of experience building technical teams across Canada, the US, UK, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. He leads recruitment for engineering, product, and data roles, including VPs of product and engineering, principal ML leaders, and applied scientists.
In this episode, Nit breaks down the three confidence problems he sees in hiring right now: the pedigree trap (assuming someone from Google or Meta will automatically level up your team), culture fit interviews that function as vibe checks instead of structured assessments, and the growing wave of deepfakes and identity fraud that is forcing companies to rethink how they verify candidates.
What you'll learn → Why hiring from big-brand companies backfires more often than recruiters admit → How culture fit rounds become bias traps when there are no structured criteria → What Xero does in intake calls to map team gaps and hold managers accountable → How deepfakes and fake profiles are showing up in live hiring interviews in 2026 → Why Nit personally reviews every applicant and refuses to let AI screen candidates out → What a hiring process without CVs could look like for engineering and AI roles → How to spot red flags on video calls (camera off, mismatched audio, off-screen typing)
GUEST
Nit Karuna, Principal AI/ML Recruiter at Xero https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitharsen/
YOUR HOST
Anita Chauhan, Founder of InGoodCo. https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitachauhan/
LISTEN & FOLLOW
Youtube: https://youtu.be/qmTSMJHjxhA
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0dbfz6y0tMq3crViHQD66H
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/looks-good-on-paper/id1625835562
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Looks Good on Paper is a hiring podcast that explores the gap between how confident companies think they are in their hiring process and how confident they should actually be. Host Anita Chauhan talks to talent leaders, recruiters, and workforce strategists about the assumptions, biases, and blind spots that shape how companies find, assess, and keep talent. Season 3 is The Confidence Gap: what do you actually trust in your hiring process?
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
